Class 




Book * P g,3 

CQEOHGHI DEPOSIT. 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



1 



PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION 

ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF 

THEODORE L. GLASGOW 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

AN INTRODUCTION TO 
HISTORICAL METHOD 

BY 

FRED MORROW FLING, PH.D. 

PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 




" The whole life of man is a perpetual comparison 
of evidence and balancing of probabilities." 



NEW HAVEN 

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXX 



do- 



i C*r 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 



NOV J 9 1920 
©CU604450 



THE THEODORE L. GLASGOW MEMORIAL 
PUBLICATION FUND 

The present volume is the second work published by 
the Yale University Press on the Theodore L. Glasgow 
Memorial Publication Fund. This Foundation was 
established September 17, 191 8, by an anonymous gift 
to Yale University in memory of Flight Sub-Lieutenant 
Theodore L. Glasgow, R.N. He was born in Montreal, 
Canada, May 25, 1898, the eldest son of Robert and 
Louise C. Glasgow, and was educated at the University 
of Toronto Schools and at the Royal Military College, 
Kingston. In August, 191 6, he entered the Royal 
Naval Air Service and in July, 191 7, went to France 
with the Tenth Squadron attached to the Twenty-Second 
Wing of the Royal Flying Corps. A month later, August 
19, 191 7, he was killed in action on the Ypres front. 



TO 
ERNST BERNHEIM 

Dean of living writers on historical method, whose 
Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, the first detailed and 
scientific presentation of the process of historical investiga- 
tion, has been the guide of a generation of scholars, this 
volume is fittingly dedicated. 



FOREWORD 

This volume is not a revised edition of my Outline 
of Historical Method; it is an entirely new work. It 
was written for college students who are beginning 
their studies in historical research, for teachers of 
history who have had no critical historical training, 
and for students of history who are hoping to find 
in private study some compensation for opportuni- 
ties not enjoyed in college. This book does not as- 
pire to fill the place of Bernheim's Lehrbuch, but 
rather to guide the student through his first steps in 
research, and to prepare him for the study of Bern- 
heim. In a word, it is an "introduction" to histori- 
cal method. 

Although the simple reading of the text might 
not, I venture to hope, prove unprofitable, it will, 
nevertheless, yield the best return when studied in 
connection with a bit of research exemplifying the 
process I have endeavored to describe. I would sug- 
gest that some limited topic be carefully worked 
over, all the steps in method being taken from the 
criticism of the sources to the construction of the 
final narrative with notes. Only by such an experi- 
ence can one fully understand what critical histori- 
cal study means and how difficult and exacting the 
work of the scientific historian is. 

[7] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



Although this volume does not deal with the 
teaching of history, it has, nevertheless, an impor- 
tant bearing upon it. A teacher who has not read at 
least an elementary text on historical method and 
completed a piece of careful scholarly research, lacks 
one of the most important parts of the equipment of 
a well-prepared teacher of history. However much 
historical information such a teacher may have ac- 
cumulated, he lacks a scientific standard that would 
enable him to separate the true from the false, to 
deal scientifically with contradictory statements in 
secondary works and to protect himself and his 
pupils against unsound and superficial historical nar- 
ratives. 

It seems extraordinary that it should be necessary 
to insist upon the importance of what should be self- 
evident, but the really extraordinary thing about the 
pedagogical situation is that a large majority of the 
teachers of history in secondary schools neither pos- 
sess an elementary knowledge of historical method 
nor consider such knowledge a necessary part of 
their equipment as teachers. A teacher of chemistry 
who could not direct experimental work in a labora- 
tory could neither secure nor hold a position in a 
good high school today, but the history courses in 
the high schools are still "passed around" to teach- 
ers without technical training. 

Fifteen years ago, in the introduction to my Out- 
line of Historical Method, I wrote that "it is the 
popular belief that any intelligent person, without 

[8] 



FOREWORD 



technical training, can teach a class in history." The 
statement is almost as true today as it was then, and 
I am convinced that there will be little improvement 
in the situation until the technical side of the history 
teacher's preparation is insisted upon, and he is re- 
quired to be as much of a professional as the teacher 
of the natural sciences. Chemistry would be taught 
in the high schools today by any. person who could 
hold a textbook, had not the practice been rendered 
impossible by the introduction of laboratory work 
into the secondary schools, thus making a technically 
trained teacher a necessity. Why should an ac- 
quaintance with the theory and practice of historical 
method not be required of every high school teacher 
of history? 

The examples in the text have been drawn almost 
exclusively from the period of the French Revolu- 
tion. The period is important and interesting enough 
to justify such a course, but it is probable that I would 
not have exploited it to quite the same extent had it 
not been the chosen field for my own researches. I 
should be glad to attract workers to a field "already 
white for the harvest." Not only does it offer great 
opportunities, but for no other period, outside of 
English or American history, is it so easy to acquire 
the language equipment which makes possible the 
reading of the sources in the original text. 

The manuscript of my book has been read by 
Professor George L. Burr, and I have profited by 
many excellent suggestions touching both matter and 

[9] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

form. It is but one of many kindnesses that have 
marked the long years of our friendship. 

It is with a feeling of gratitude that I dedicate 
this volume to Professor Bernheim. I was groping 
my way in method at a German university when his 
Lehrbuch appeared; it led me out into the light. It 
has saved many another lost soul in the quarter of 
a century of its existence. Bernheim's name should 
be as familiar to the student of history as Euclid's 
to the student of mathematics. 

Fred Morrow Fling. 



[10] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Introduction . . . . . .15 

Why History is Studied — What is History — History and Sociology 
— Synthesis in History and in Sociology — Both History and Soci- 
ology Rest on Past Social Facts — The Reality as Natural Science 
— The Reality as History — History as Science — Necessity of His- 
torical Knowledge — HistoxicjaJ Consciousness — How Historical 
Knowledge is Acquired-^Naturfc of Historical Method — Histpri- 
cal Sources — The Steps InHistorical Method — Knowledge of 
Historical Method of General Value — Languages as Aids to 
Historical Study — Literature and Historical Study — Art and His- 
torical Study — Logic and Philosophy, and Historical Study — His- 
tory and the Natural Sciences of Society — Plan of Historical 
Study — Intensive or Method Work — European Study and Travel. 

PAGE 

II. Choice of a Subject. Collection and Classification 

of Sources ...... 33 

Choice of Subjects for Undergraduates — Bibliography vs. Critical 
Training — One Topic for the Whole Class — Subjects for Ad- 
vanced Students — Limitation of Subject and Possibilities for 
Future Work — Choice of Subject and Tastes of Student — Does 
the Subject Need to be Investigated? — -Collection of Material: 
Secondary Works — Collection of Material: Sources — Search for 
Material Must be Thorough — Illustrations of Search for 
Material — Note-Taking — Sources : Remains — Sources : Tradition 
— Difference between Remains and Tradition — Different Kinds 
of Tradition — Value of Oral and Written Tradition — Value of 
Pictorial Tradition — Various Kinds of Written Tradition. 

PAGE 

III. ' Criticism of the Sources: Genuineness . . 48 

Affirmations and Facts — All Sources Must be Critically Evaluated 
— Relation of the Witness to the Fact Reported — Genuineness 
of the Source — Quantity and Variety of Forgeries — The Moabite 
Pottery — Sardinian Forgery — Famous Forgeries — Memoires de 

En] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

Bailly — Third Volume of Memoires a Compilation — Who Com- 
piled It? — Journal of a Spy — Forged Letters of Marie An- 
toinette — Relation of Genuineness to Reconstruction of Fact — 
Tests of Genuineness — Problems of Genuineness not Always 
Solved — Problems of Genuineness not Solved by Novices. 

PAGE 

IV. Criticism of the Sources: Localization . .61 

Localization of Sources — Personality of Witness: W T ho Wrote the 
Source ? — Journal of Duquesnoy — How the Problem of Author- 
ship was Solved — Proving from the Text that Bailly Wrote his 
Memoires — The Letter of Capello — Ascertaining the Personality 
of a Witness from the Study of the Text — Letter of Camille 
Desmoulins — Character Revealed by Desmoulins' Letter — Time 
of Writing — Memory Untrustworthy — Method of Fixing the 
Date of a Source — Terminus ante quern — Terminus post quern — 
Date of Desmoulins' Letter — Date of Capello's Letter — Date of 
the Letter of the Swedish Ambassador — Date of Biauzat's Letter 
— Incorrect Dating of Letter Written by Marie Antoinette — Dif- 
ficulty of Dating Memoires — Dating the Memoires of Bailly — 
Where Was the Source Written? — Localizing a Manuscript 
Source — Written in the Monastery of Rosenfeld — Analysis of the 
Source: First- and Second-hand Information — Letter of Camille 
Desmoulins — Necker and the Council Meeting of June 19, 1789 
— Evaluation of the Source the Goal of Criticism — How the Per- 
sonality of the Writer Affects the Value of the Source — Influ- 
ences that Lessen the Value of a Source — Untrustworthiness of 
Memoires — Value of the Opinions and Judgments of a Witness. 

PAGE 

V. Criticism of the Sources: Independence . . 88 

Tracing the Source of Second-Hand Information — Proof of De- 
pendence — Point du jour Dependent on Proces-verbal — Memoires 
of Bailly Dependent on Point du jour and Proce s-verbal — Rela- 
tionship of the Moniteur, Journal des debats, and L'histoire par 
deux amis de la liberte — When the Publication of the Journal 
Began — How the Moniteur and the Journal Were Compiled — 
— How Texts Are Compared — The Moniteur Drew from the 
Journal — Editors of Moniteur Used Other Sources — Relation of 
L'histoire par deux amis to the Moniteur — Dependence a Sub- 
tile Thing — Illustration from the Events of October 6, 1789 — 
Necessity of Establishing IndepfaOence of Witness — The Re- 

[ 12 ] 



CONTENTS 



suits of Critical Studies Should be Published — False Notion Con- 
cerning Critical Work in Modern History — Ranke's Work a 
Model for the Young Historian. 

PAGE 

VI. Establishment of the Facts . . . .103 

Affirmations and Facts — Self-deception — Possibility the Foundation 
of Historical Proof — Turning Water into Wine — The Impos- 
sible in One Age May Become the Possible in a Later Age — 
Scientific Experiment and Historical Testimony — We May not 
Reason from Possibility to Probability — Reading and Note-Tak- 
ing — Character of Notes — Establishment of the Facts — Two or 
More Independent Witnesses Agree — Details Affirmed by a 
Single Witness — Independent Witnesses Disagree — Duquesnoy 
and the Tricolored Cockade — Decree of the City Government — 
Statement of Morris — Statement of Virieu — Statement of the 
Venetian Ambassador — Statement of the Proces-<verbal — Other 
Sources — The Cockade Blue and Red — Large Part of History 
Does not Rest on Testimony of Eyewitnesses — Thucydides and 
the Dorian Migration — Character of Evidence for Greek His- 
tory — Constructive Reasoning — The Webster Case — Character 
of Constructive Reasoning — Example of Constructive Reasoning 
— Argument from Silence — Constructive Reasoning Should be 
Used only with Caution — Inferences from Constructive Reason- 
ing and Facts Established by Direct Testimony. 

PAGE 

VII. Synthesis, or Grouping of the Facts . .126 

Facts and Synthesis — Theory and Practice in Historical Method — 
Limitation of the Subject — Foundation of German Empire — Be- 
ginning and End of the French Revolution — Practical Considera- 
tion of Number of Pages — Value in Historical Method: Omis- 
sion — Value in Historical Method: Emphasis — Evaluation as 
Practiced by the Historian — How the Historical Value of a 
Topic is Determined — Problem of a Synthesis of the World's 
History — World Synthesis Presupposes a Philosophy of Life — 
What is the End of the World's History? — Common Standards 
of Value — How Shall the Facts be Grouped? — The French Revo- 
lution from July, 1787, to July, 1790: Limits — Synthesis of the 
Period July, 1789, to July, 1790: Formation of Series — Distinction 
between the Synthesis of Natural Science and the Synthesis of 
History — History and Sociology— The Treatment of Sub-series — 



[13] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

Practical Suggestions for Outlining — Combination of Series — 
Combination: Practical Suggestions — Illustration from French 
Revolution — Artistic Reasons for Combination: The Revolu- 
tion in the Provinces — The Making of the Constitution — The 
Insurrection of October 5 and 6 — Limitation in Tracing Causes 
— The Banquet of October 1, 1789 — The Immediate Causes of 
the Insurrection — Causal Connection — Progress in Historical 
Synthesis — Synthesis and Lack of Knowledge — Genius and Syn- 
thesis — Synthesis Must Show Unique Change — How to Secure 
Unity — Important and Unimportant Factors — Local Color — Illus- 
tration from the Opening of the Estates in May, 1789. 

PAGE 

VIII. Exposition 155 

Outline and Exposition — History not Necessarily Literature — Dis- 
tinction between History and Literature — Assumption that His- 
tory must be Literature Hampers Historical Work — The Public 
and Historical Science — Popular Histories and Scientific His- 
tories — Attempt to Write for both Popular and Scientific Audi- 
ences — Scientific Exposition the Concern of this Volume — Char- 
acteristics of a Good Narrative — Constructive Imagination — Ex- 
amples of Constructive Imagination — One Reason for Classifi- 
cation of History as Literature — Critical Examination of Nar- 
rative — The Study of Models — Exposition and Proof — Narrative 
Must Reflect the Character of the Evidence — Literature and the 
Use of Evidence — Incorporation of Source Extracts into the 
Text — Citation of Proof — Examples from Work of Flammer- 
mont — Explanation of Blunder — Proof for All Statements — What 
the Footnotes Should Accomplish — Citation of Volume and 
Page — Citation of Manuscript Sources — Critical Bibliography — 
Notes Containing Quotations — Reproduction of Original Lan- 
guage — The Critical Footnote — The Case of * Robespierre — 
Belloc's Treatment of the Case — Statement with Footnote — Dif- 
ficulty in Distinguishing between Matter Suitable for the Text 
and Matter Suitable for the Footnote — Critical Bibliography — 
Appendices. 



[u] 



I 

INTRODUCTION 

Historical method is the process employed in the 
search for historical truth. But why should we seek 
for historical truth? How can we justify the ex- 
penditure of so much energy by scholars in histori- 
cal research and the devotion of so much time to 
historical study in the schools? What benefit do we 
hope to obtain from it all? Is the entertainment to 
be found in the observation of the ever changing 
panorama of the past life of the world the chief 
cause of our interest in historical study and its suf- 
ficient justification? Or is our interest due rather to 
the import of the content of history, an import so 
deep for us that the study of history becomes a 
necessity? 

What is history? Unlike Bacon's "jesting Pilate," 
who asked, "What is truth?" and "would not stay 
for an answer," the historian must tarry and answer 
the question he has raised. Turning the pages of a 
history of the world, we note that it deals with all 
man's social activities, economic, political, educa- 
tional, artistic and religious. It describes them, 
however, not in a state of repose, but of movement 
and change. In this change, our attention is drawn, 

[ 15 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



not to what repeats itself, but to what is nef>v, what 
has never happened before and can never happen 
again in the same way. From all this it is evident 
that the historian is concerned with tracing the 
unique evolution of man in his activities as a social 
being, the unique life record of humanity. If this be 
history, then history cannot "repeat itself," there 
cannot be "historical laws," for a law is a generali- 
zation and a generalization assumes repetition. 

It is clear, then, that history deals with past social 
facts, but it is important to note that all past social 
facts are not necessarily historical facts. The terms 
historical and social are not synonymous. A past 
social fact becomes an historical fact when it has 
been made a part of an historical synthesis, for his- 
torical, when applied to human affairs, signifies noth- 
ing less than a certain logical way of looking at and 
organizing past social facts. When our attention is 
directed toward the uniqueness, the individuality of 
past social facts, when they interest because of their 
importance for the unique evolution of man in his 
activities as a social being, in selecting the facts and 
in grouping them into a complex, evolving whole, 
we employ the historical method; the result of our 
work is history. 

If, on the contrary, we are interested in what past 
social facts have in common, in the way in which 
social facts repeat themselves, if our purpose is to 
form generalizations, or laws concerning social ac- 
tivities, we employ another logical method, the 

[16] 



INTRODUCTION 



method of the natural sciences. We select our facts 
not for their individuality or for the importance of 
their individuality for a complex whole, but for what 
each fact has in common with others and the syn- 
thesis is not a complex, unique whole, but a generali- 
zation in which no trace of the individuality of the 
past social fact remains. The result of our work is 
sociology, not history. Thus the work of the histo- 
rian supplements that of the sociologist. The histo- 
rian is interested in quality, individuality , unique- 
ness; the sociologist in quantity, in generalization, in 
repetition. 

Sociology cannot, then, be the science of history ; 
it is the natural science of society. Both the historian 
and the sociologist deal with past social facts, but 
not always with the same past social facts, nor in 
selecting and grouping the facts do they employ the 
same methods. Their methods are logically dif- 
ferent, because their ends are different. This differ- 
ence between the synthesis of history and that of 
sociology, or the natural science of society, may be 
crudely illustrated by a figure. Before us, upon a 
table, lie a large number of pieces of colored glass 
of different sizes, shapes and colors. The problem 
is to form from these fragments a single sheet of 
glass the size of the table top. It may be solved in 
two ways. The pieces may be thrown into a melting 
pot and when completely fused the molten mass may 
be poured into a mould the size of the table top. 
When the glass has cooled, we shall have a single 

[ 17 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

sheet of glass of uniform color. The individual 
pieces have, however, disappeared. In vain we look 
for that bit of orange or crimson of peculiar shape; 
it has lost its individuality in a composite whole. 
But there is another way of solving the problem of 
unity. Bit by bit the fragments might be fitted to- 
gether until each piece had found its place and a 
complex whole, a stained-glass window, has been 
called into being. The pieces have not lost their in- 
dividuality, but retain it as parts of a larger, com- 
plex, unique whole. The first process is that of 
natural science, of sociology; the second, that of 
history. 

From this brief account of the logic of historical 
as distinguished from sociological synthesis, it 
should be clear that sociology does not rest upon a 
substratum of history, but that both history and 
sociology rest upon a foundation of past social facts, 
approach these facts from different points of view, 
employ logically different methods in selecting and 
combining the facts and attain logically different 
syntheses. If this be true, the suggestion that the syn- 
thesis of sociology be substituted for that of history, 
on the ground that history is thus "raised to the 
rank of a science," would, if adopted, tend to con- 
found things that should be kept distinct. Both syn- 
theses are justifiable, and both are scientific. 

The entire reality may, in a word, be studied and 
organized from the point of view of the general, of 
repetition, of law, or, as we say, nature. This 

[18] 



INTRODUCTION 



method, applied to ever widening fields of research, 
gives us sociology, psychology, biology, chemistry, 
physics and mechanics. The more comprehensive 
the generalization, the less of quality it contains, 
until the climax is reached in a law of motion ap- 
plied to units from which quality has been com- 
pletely eliminated. This method of natural science 
is as old as language. We note its beginning in the 
use of such terms as man, woman, tree, house, cloth- 
ing, law, king, queen, government and thousands of 
others. We call them common nouns, or terms ap- 
plied to groups of objects, calling attention to some 
common characteristic. The term clothing, for ex- 
ample, is applied to all objects used as covering for 
the body, but the word suggests nothing as to the 
texture, color, shape or size of the covering. 

All reality can, on the other hand, be organized 
from the point of view of difference, of individual- 
ity, or uniqueness, in other words, from the histor- 
ical point of view. The beginning of the historical 
point of view is likewise as old as language ; its con- 
cepts we term proper nouns. Mary, John, the Char- 
ter Oak, the White House, are terms calling atten- 
tion not to what an object has in common with 
others, but to what differentiates it from other ob- 
jects, to what constitutes its individuality, its unique- 
ness. And when applied to incidents, to actions, the 
terms emphasize likewise the unique. It is the battle 
of Waterloo, the German reformation, the French 
revolution that is of interest, and not all battles, all 

[19] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

reformations and all revolutions. Moreover, the 
whole with which the historical point of view deals 
is not a generalization, but a complex whole, the 
complexity and individuality increasing with the size 
of the whole. The history of the Greek people is 
more complex than the battle of Marathon, which 
is only a part of it; but the history of the Greek 
people, in its turn, is less complex than the history 
of Europe, of which it forms a part. World history 
— the last great, complex whole — is more complex 
than any of its parts, because it embraces them all. 

// science is organized knowledge, then both nat- 
ural science and history are scientific; they repre- 
sent the complete organization of reality from two 
different logical points of view. "From one to the 
other no bridge leads. ,y An historical incident can 
not be deduced from a natural law. That is, the 
burning of Moscow cannot be deduced from our 
general knowledge of the law of combustion, nor 
can a law of natural science be built up on an his- 
torical incident, upon what has happened but once 
and never can happen again in exactly the same way. 
When the sociologist makes use of the work of the 
historian, he destroys the complex whole, using the 
raw material for new and different ends. 

Natural science cannot, then, give us an exhaus- 
tive knowledge of reality; a knowledge of history, 
of reality organized from the point of view of the 
unique, is equally essential. As limited to human af- 
fairs, history concerns itself with the complex, 

[20] 



INTRODUCTION 



unique evolution of man in his activities as a social 
being. It begins with the first traces of social life 
and will end only when society itself disappears 
from the earth. The necessity of such knowledge to 
the individual should be self-evident. Man is a de- 
pendent member of a living social organization. 
This social organization is the product of all the 
social life that has preceded it, the last chapter in 
a continuous drama in many scenes and acts. Effec- 
tive action by an individual, as a member of society, 
depends not solely upon a knowledge of the life of 
his own time, but likewise upon that of the preceding 
ages out of which his own age has developed. If 
he would understand the problems of his own age, 
he must study them as parts of the great, unique 
evolution of the human race. He must possess a full, 
detailed and exact knowledge of that unique evolu- 
tion. Such knowledge can be obtained only by histori- 
cal study. This vicarious experience, undergone by 
past generations, supplements the experience of the 
living present and is quite as indispensable. The 
octogenarian of wide and varied experience sadly 
deceives himself, if he imagines that his large per- 
sonal experience can in any way serve as a substitute 
for the experience obtained from historical study. 
Individual experience develops the consciousness of 
the individual; the study of the past of humanity 
develops the historical consciousness of the race. 

That a generation may know the past, the history 
of the past must be written and taught. It is a strik- 

[21] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

ing fact that the leading peoples of the world, those 
displaying the most highly developed historical con- 
sciousness, possess the largest number of historians, 
have the. greatest output of historical work and de- 
vote the largest amount of time to the teaching of 
history in the schools. The writing and teaching of 
history does for the race what living does for the 
individual; it acquaints it with the experience of the 
race. It is necessary, then, that history should be 
both written and taught. In truth, it always has been 
taught. When the half-savage man recited to his 
child the deeds of his ancestors, history was being 
recorded and historical consciousness was being de- 
veloped. The distance that separates the age in which 
we live from those remote days may be shown as 
clearly by the number of individuals devoting their 
lives to historical research and by the amount of 
time given in the schools to historical study as by 
the complicated social machinery which differen- 
tiates the civilization of today from primitive so- 
ciety. 

// the knowledge of the past is a necessity, it must 
he taught to each generation; before it can he 
taught, it must he written. This reconstructed ex- 
perience of the past, if it is to he valuable, must be 
full, detailed and above all exact. Hence, the first 
consideration in an historical narration is not pic- 
turesqueness or a pleasing style, but truth; a sound 
historical consciousness can rest on no other founda- 
tion. Assuming that a knowledge of the past is a 

[22] 



INTRODUCTION 



necessity, how can it be acquired? What is the his- 
torical process, the method of reconstructing the 
past? History has been written for centuries, but a 
conscious study and formulation of the method used 
by the historian in reconstructing the past is a mat- 
ter of recent date. Bernheim's Lehrbuch der histor- 
ischen Methode (1889) was the first attempt to 
describe the method in detail and to supply the stu- 
dent of historical research with a full and reliable 
manual. Here was gathered up and presented in 
systematic form the accumulated experience of the 
historians of the past as learned from a study of 
their works or from what they had written about 
their methods of research. Historical investigation 
had at last become fully conscious. 

The process by which the historical past is recon- 
structed differs fundamentally from the method of 
natural science. Natural science establishes its gen- 
eralizations by experimentation. Because it is not 
interested in the individual — the unique — it can 
eliminate this element from the problem, thus ren- 
dering experimentation, or repetition, possible. It is 
observed that certain causes, working under certain 
conditions, seemingly produce certain results. Again 
and again these causes may be set at work under like 
conditions, and the effect observed until it is possible 
to state with certainty what the outcome will be, that 
is, to predict it. It should be noted, however, that 
prediction in natural science has nothing historical 
in it; natural science cannot predict the unique. It 

[ 23 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

may teach us the conditions under which combustion 
will always take place, but it cannot tell us that those 
conditions existed in Moscow in 1812, and will exist 
again in some other place on a given day. Because he 
is interested in the unique, the historian can not take 
advantage of experimentation. He cannot conjure 
up the figures of the past and cause them to repro- 
duce for him the famous scenes of history. History 
never repeats itself, and it is from what remains 
from the single act that this act must be reproduced. 
The student of natural science may study actual 
changes taking place before his eyes, may observe 
them directly, may reproduce them; the historian 
sees not the fact, but only the residue of the fact, 
and from a study of this he attempts to reconstruct 
the fact itself. This residue of the historical past we 
call sources. Without sources, no part of the histori- 
cal past can be reconstructed. 

The historical sources are the remains of man's 
unique activities as a social being. One large part of 
them was not originally intended to supply infor- 
mation to the historian, but because of its origin, be- 
cause it was the product of historical activities, it is 
fitted to supply information concerning these activi- 
ties. This group is infinite in number and variety. 
Here we encounter the remains of the human body, 
of clothing, food, dwellings, arms, utensils, books, 
pictures, statuary, language, literature, laws, man- 
ners and customs. To this group of sources the tech- 
nical term remains is given. These objects may be 

[24] 



INTRODUCTION 



observed directly and inferences drawn from them 
touching the manners and customs of the times in 
which they originated. Concerning the evolution of 
the unique activities of the period to which they be- 
long, they say little, and it is to a second division of 
sources, called tradition, that we must turn for the 
information not found in remains. A tradition is a 
record of the impression made upon some human 
brain by a past event and was intended at the time 
of its origin to convey information concerning that 
event. The record of the impression may be oral, 
written or pictorial. A large part of our history is 
necessarily reconstructed from written tradition, con- 
taining not the fact itself, but what the witness 
thought the fact was. y 

The first step taken by the historian in the at- 
tempt to reconstruct man's unique social past is to 
bring together all the sources that can be discovered 
containing any information on the period under in- 
vestigation. Once collected, the sources must be sub- 
mitted to a rigorous criticism to determine the value 
of the affirmations in each tradition and the relation 
of the affirmations to each other. For historical 
truth is established by the agreement of the affirma- 
tions of well-informed, independent witnesses. After 
the facts have been established, they are grouped 
in logical and chronological order to form a com- 
plex whole, and a narrative, based on the outline 
and accompanied by notes in proof of the affirma- 
tions contained in the text, completes the work of 

[25] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

the historian. In a word, the process is this : the his- 
torical event takes place and leaves its deposit of 
sources behind it; the historian collects the sources, 
criticises them, compares the affirmations contained 
in the traditions, groups the facts and writes his nar- 
rative. 

The value of the reconstruction, of the narrative, 
depends obviously upon ( i ) the quantity and qual- 
ity of the sources and (2) upon the critical skill and 
constructive ability of the historian, or, in other 
words, upon his knowledge of historical method. 
This knowledge of method is of value to the general 
student of history as well as to the specialist. If edu- 
cation consists quite as much in a knowledge of the 
processes by which we attain to truth as in the 
knowledge of truth itself, acquaintance with the 
method of investigation in history should form part 
of the training of every student in history. Labora- 
tory work in the natural sciences is taken as a matter 
of course today; its justification is found not in the 
amount of information acquired, but in the value of 
the knowledge of the method by which truth is as- 
certained in the natural sciences. And yet the method, 
once learned, is, as a rule, used only by the specialist. 
We may know how to detect impurities in water, but 
we turn the work over to a trained bacteriologist. 

Every hour in the day, however, we are forced 
to pass judgments upon the truth or falsity of his- 
torical events, to apply the tests of historical 
method. The work is done, as a rule, unconsciously 

[26] 



INTRODUCTION 



and crudely. Why not make it conscious and scien- 
tific? Recently the people of two continents were 
called upon to decide between the rival claims of 
Cook and Peary. It was a problem in historical crit- 
icism, not to be solved by the knowledge of a mass 
of historical data, but by an acquaintance with the 
method of handling historical evidence and with the 
process by which historical facts are established. 
The public was quite incapable of dealing with it. 
But it is not simply in estimating the truth or falsity 
of contemporary history that a knowledge of his- 
torical method proves itself a valuable part of the 
equipment of an educated person. A knowledge of 
the method is likewise the Ariadne thread which 
will guide him through the maze of secondary his- 
torical works- — many of little value — constantly 
pouring from the press. 

A knowledge of the theory of historical method 
and some acquaintance with its application do not 
form the sole preparation for historical research 
and for the teaching of history. A few practical sug- 
gestions to the undergraduate specializing in history 
or to the teacher who wishes to become a trained 
specialist will form a fitting conclusion to this intro- 
duction. 

First among the indispensable aids to historical 
study, especially the study of European history, is a 
knowledge of language. The investigator must be 
able to read his sources in the language in which they 
were written and he must also be able to read sec- 

[27] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

ondary works upon the period he is investigating 
whether printed in English, French, German or Ital- 
ian. The first-hand study of Greek, Roman or medi- 
aeval history calls for a knowledge of Greek and 
Latin, to make the sources accessible, and of French, 
German and Italian for the reading of modern 
writers. The necessity of acquiring a knowledge of 
Latin grows less as we advance into modern history, 
but in dealing with the history of the church it never 
entirely disappears. The language equipment that 
may be required of a writer of the history of Europe 
in the nineteenth century is something appalling. 
It may call for a reading knowledge not only of 
the Germanic and Romance languages, — German, 
Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Ital- 
ian, Spanish and Portuguese, — but of Greek, Mag- 
yar, Russian and Turkish, enough to make the bold- 
est hesitate. This is not, however, an impossible task 
for one who begins his language study early and 
keeps at it persistently. 

One should decide as early as possible in what 
field of history one's interest lies. Whether one 
decides for ancient or modern history, a reading 
knowledge of German and French and, if possible, 
of Italian, should be acquired in the undergraduate 
years and this knowledge at once put to use in his- 
torical reading and research. Two years of German 
and one year of French should be the minimum 
amount of language taken in the classroom, if the 
student would not be seriously handicapped in his 

[28] 



INTRODUCTION 



subsequent work. But the classroom work in lan- 
guage will have been thrown away, if it is not per- 
sistently followed up by the use of historical works 
in German and French. To do this is not easy, but 
it must be done, if historical scholarship is the end 
in view. The important thing is to use the languages 
constantly until they can be used readily. 

A second subject that should be studied in under- 
graduate years in connection with history is litera- 
ture. And here likewise the simple classroom work 
will not suffice. In general, the student should read 
— not necessarily in the original language — the 
masterpieces of the great literatures, as expressions 
of the spiritual ideals and cravings of the peoples. 
He should read more intensively in the literature of 
the people and of the period in which his historical 
interest centers. A few of the best English and 
French works on literary criticism should form a 
part of his reading. Much may be accomplished in 
the four undergraduate years, if a definite program 
is prepared and followed systematically. The work 
thus begun should be carried on during the years of 
graduate study. 

The study of art and architecture should accom- 
pany the study of literature. A few good volumes 
on architecture, sculpture and painting should be 
carefully read as guides to the examination of pho- 
tographs of works of art, of facsimiles or, in the 
case of paintings, of the originals themselves when 
they are accessible in a gallery. One year to Greek 

[ 29 1 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

art, one to the art of the Renaissance and one to the 
art of the nineteenth century would make a fair be- 
ginning. The time should not be wasted on unimpor- 
tant works and unimportant men, but the great men 
and their works should be dwelt on sufficiently long 
to make a lasting impression possible and to enable 
the student to acquire a sympathetic acquaintance 
with the masterpieces of the men who have set the 
standard in the world of art. 

A course in logic, dealing with the theory of 
knowledge and the classification of the sciences, is 
essential. It will enable the student to understand 
the place of history among the sciences and will save 
him from the mental unrest that so many have 
passed through in the fruitless attempt to transform 
history into a natural science. This course in logic 
should be followed by a course in the philosophy of 
history and by the study of the principal works of 
James, Eucken and Bergson. To the historian, a 
philosophy of life is indispensable as a prerequisite 
to a concept of world history. 

Language, literature, art, logic, philosophy are 
all directly related to the work of the historian in 
his attempt to trace the unique evolution of man 
in his activities as a social being. Another group of 
subjects dealing with social repetitions or laws — eco- 
nomics, political science, psychology and sociology 
— is of indirect value for the student of history and 
at least an elementary knowledge of each should be 
acquired. 

[30] 



INTRODUCTION 



The historical study proper should run through 
the four undergraduate years. General surveys of 
ancient, mediaeval, and modern history — including 
English and American — should be followed by more 
intensive studies of limited periods. The aim in 
these latter studies should be not only to learn some- 
thing of the history of a period, but also to make 
the acquaintance of the principal sources and second- 
ary works relating to it. These works should be 
actually handled and certain parts read. The second- 
ary works should be carefully chosen, no time being 
wasted upon works once famous, still occupying a 
place in our libraries, but scientifically out of date. 
A speaking acquaintance should be made with the 
most important historical reviews. 

Parallel with the general historical work should 
go the intensive or method work. It should be be- 
gun in the first year and should be based in the first 
two years on sources in English or translated into 
English; in the last two years sources in the original 
languages — Latin, French, German — may be used. 
After four years of careful, scientific, intensive work 
the student will be prepared to do graduate work of 
some value. 

If the student is interested in European history, 
his dream and his plans will be to go to Europe to 
study. He will act wisely, if he defers this graduate 
study until he has received his master's degree from 
some one of the leading universities in this country, 
has decided on his special field of work, has a read- 

[31] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

ing knowledge of the European language he will 
be called upon to use, knows what critical work 
means, has done all that can be done in this country 
on his thesis and is ready to profit by what he finds 
on the continent.' What he should hope to acquire 
in Europe is a speaking knowledge of at least one 
language; a knowledge of the life of at least one of 
the European peoples; the assistance of the man 
who knows more than any other man about the sub- 
ject in which he is interested and an opportunity to 
examine the sources, both printed and manuscript, 
which are necessary for the completion of the inves- 
tigation he has begun on this side of the Atlantic. 

What has been suggested here as preparation for 
historical study is far beyond what the great major- 
ity of history teachers have enjoyed, but is within 
the reach of all teachers of average ability who will 
set themselves seriously and systematically to work. 
Four or five years of patient, continuous study, in 
accordance with a well-arranged program, can ac- 
complish wonders. It is worth doing, for it puts en- 
thusiasm into the teacher's work and keeps him alive 
intellectually. Nothing contributes more to these 
ends than research work. How that work may be 
begun and carried on, it is the purpose of this vol- 
ume to show. 



[32] 



II 

CHOICE OF A SUBJECT. COLLEC- 
TION AND CLASSIFICATION 
OF SOURCES 

The first problem which confronts the beginner in 
research work is the choice of a subject. It does not 
present itself in the same way to the undergraduate 
as to the advanced student. To the undergraduate, 
who is learning the technique of method, the ques- 
tion as to whether the topic selected for study has 
been worked over before is a matter of no great im- 
portance. The same laboratory problems are as- 
signed in chemistry, botany and physics year after 
year. The fact that these problems had all been 
solved by scientists before they were used for ele- 
mentary work in no way lessens their value for such 
work. The training in method, in technique, is the 
purpose of the work, not original research. 

The topic in history for beginners should be as- 
signed by the instructor and the source material put 
into the hands of the students. I know this runs coun- 
ter to the common practice. It eliminates the biblio- 
graphical work from the first year and stresses the 
second step in research, the critical handling of evi- 
dence. Much can be said, however, in favor of this 

[33] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

change. To run over a card catalogue, a periodical 
index or a volume of bibliography and note the titles 
of books or articles bearing on a given topic is not a 
difficult matter. The technique is learned in the first 
hour of work; after that, it is largely repetition, and 
the titles might quite as well be gathered by proxy 
and presented to the student. A large part of the 
material thus collected is of no value whatever for 
the scientific historical worker. The gathering and 
reading of worthless material is time thrown away, 
time that could be given with much greater advan- 
tage to the critical study of valuable source material. 
If we cannot, in the first year of college work, teach 
both bibliography and criticism, let us teach criti- 
cism; bibliography can be taught later in the course. 

While it is not necessary to lay an original prob- 
lem before beginners, it is quite as easy as to present 
one that has been thoroughly worked over and the 
original problem is much more interesting both for 
the instructor and for the class. The same problem 
should be assigned to the whole class, if it is to be 
made the basis for classroom study, as it should be. 
If the interest of the instructor lies in a field for 
which no printed source studies exist, it is no great 
task to arrange a study. Forty or fifty pages of 
sources supply material enough for the purpose and 
this may be put out in mimeographed sheets at slight 
expense to the student. 

For the advanced student, for one who has taken 
his first steps in research and is looking about for 

[34] 



CHOICE OF A SUBJECT 

original work to do, the problem presents itself in 
a different form. It is not a question of what one 
would like to do, but of what one is able to do, of 
what needs to be done and of what can be done. As 
the result of his reading, a student or teacher may- 
have become interested in a topic in Greek or Rus- 
sian history. He would like to investigate it, to write 
it up from the sources. Can he read Greek and Latin, 
or Russian? He cannot. Is he willing to learn to read 
them in order to be able to do this work? He had 
not thought of it and on considering the matter seri- 
ously decides that it would be unwise to undertake 
it. Perhaps he has been attracted by some topic in 
the Middle Ages, but has no knowledge of mediaeval 
Latin, paleography or diplomatics, all of which he 
should know as preliminary to the study of the 
sources. 

If the student is young, the interest in the topic 
great and the topic worth the time and trouble, the 
preparation may be acquired and the work executed; 
for the older student, who has no time to spare, it 
would be better to seek a subject in a field which may 
be worked with the preparation he already has or 
that may be acquired without too great expenditure 
of time and effort. It is better, if possible, to select 
a subject for investigation from some field in which 
the student is somewhat widely read, for no topic 
can be successfully investigated, if the investigator 
does not possess a good working background for it. 
To acquire such a background one must devote much 

[35] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



time to the reading of secondary histories. Much of 
this time can be saved, if a topic is chosen in a 
familiar field. 

Two very important suggestions to the beginner 
are (i) to limit the scope of the investigation so 
that the work may be thoroughly done in the time 
that may be given to it and (2) to select a topic that 
is a part of a larger whole, making possible an in- 
definite continuation of research. Young students left 
to themselves might choose the whole subject of the 
diplomatic history of the Thirty Years' War, or of 
reconstruction in the South, without any conception 
of the number of years it would take to examine the 
sources upon which such a thesis, if it is to be of any 
scientific value, must rest. A single episode of the 
first subject or an account of reconstruction in a sin- 
gle state will give occupation enough for the grad- 
uate student. When, on the other hand, a student 
selects a topic that is isolated, that connects with 
nothing larger, he runs the risk of ending his inves- 
tigations with his master's or doctor's thesis. 

Finally, it is well to avoid topics for the investiga- 
tion of which the student has no natural fitness or 
taste. Problems from economic, religious or art his- 
tory, for example, should not be undertaken unless 
the student has some natural taste for such matters 
and can approach them sympathetically. 

If the student is able to investigate the subject, the 
next question is, Does it need to be investigated? In 
other words: (1) Has it never been investigated? 

[36] 



CHOICE OF A SUBJECT 

(2) Has it been investigated in an incomplete way? 

(3) Has the material been treated uncritically? (4) 
Is a new and valuable synthesis possible? (5) Has 
new material been found that justifies the re-exami- 
nation of the topic? If one or more of these condi- 
tions exist, the topic needs to be investigated. But 
how can one be certain that any one of these con- 
ditions does exist? A quick way to find out is to con- 
sult some historian who knows, somebody who is a 
specialist in the field in which the student is inter- 
ested. If no such person can be found, the student 
must solve the problem himself. To discover what 
has been written on the topic is a bibliographical 
problem; to determine whether the writers of these 
works have utilized all the existing source material is 
also a bibliographical problem; to pass judgment 
upon the manner in which the sources have been used 
is a critical problem; and, finally, to decide whether 
the facts can be combined in a new and instructive 
way is a problem in synthesis. How these problems 
should be dealt with will be shown later. 

While answering the second problem, — the need 
of investigation, — the student will have acquired the 
means of answering the third, Can the topic be in- 
vestigated? In other words, are there sources enough 
in existence to enable the investigator to determine 
what the historical facts were? If not, no matter how 
interesting the topic may be, it cannot be investi- 
gated. 

The topic for investigation having been fixed 

[ 37 ] 



THE WRITING, OF HISTORY 

upon, the next step is to collect the material with 
which the investigation is to deal, that is to say, 
the secondary works and the sources. The secondary 
works are often helpful in indicating what the sources 
are, in interpreting and criticising them, in establish- 
ing the facts and in synthesizing them. Not to take 
advantage of all the good work done in the past on 
the topic would clearly be a waste of time and an 
indication of a lack of understanding of the right 
conditions of scientific advance. Each generation of 
historians should begin where the previous genera- 
tion left off, and each historian should work with 
posterity in view and formulate the result of his 
work in such a way that it will not be necessary to 
do it over again. 

To learn what has been written on a topic in Euro- 
pean history is no easy matter. Bibliographies of 
countries and periods can be found, but they may not 
be sufficiently exhaustive in their lists, or may not 
have been published at a sufficiently recent date, so 
that one is not certain that they tell the whole story. 
Furthermore, such bibliographies deal almost, if not 
quite, wholly with books and tell us nothing of what 
has been printed in historical reviews. There is a 
long list of such reviews, English, French, German, 
Italian, Russian, etc., any one of which may contain 
a satisfactory treatment of the topic which has been 
selected for investigation, thus making a new treat- 
ment unnecessary. It is not safe to go ahead without 
examining at least the indexes of the reviews of the 

[38] 



CHOICE OF A SUBJECT 

country of whose history the topic forms a part. As 
a rule it is wise to do more than this. In the last few 
years, for example, perhaps as much has been pub- 
lished in Russian reviews on the France of the late 
eighteenth century as in French reviews. The Ger- 
man reviews have also had some valuable studies on 
the same period. 

As the bibliographical work proceeds, the student 
should form a card catalogue of the titles, examine 
the works and take notes upon any matter he may 
want to make use of. If the notes are at all volumi- 
nous, it is better to keep them apart from the cata- 
logue in a loose-leaved notebook. A card is well 
enough for a brief note, but a sheet of paper should 
be used for a long extract. 

Up to a certain point the preparation of a bibli- 
ography of the sources does not differ from that of 
secondary works. In searching for secondary works, 
however, we are searching for printed matter, while 
this may be true of the search for sources to a lim- 
ited extent only. A large part of the sources may be in 
manuscript form, some of them may be oral and pic- 
torial, while some may belong to the group called re- 
mains. Of a large part of this material, no biblio- 
graphical trace may exist. To discover the material 
is a most important part of the work of the investi- 
gator. For a thorough search for sources, a serious 
attempt to bring together all the evidence bearing 
upon the topic is the sine qua non of a piece of inves- 
tigation that is to have any permanent value. 

[39] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

To succeed in this search for unrecorded evidence 
one must have both ingenuity and patience; ingenu- 
ity in forming hypotheses concerning the existence 
and probable location of evidence and patience in 
testing these hypotheses. In a large majority of cases, 
the search is fruitful. For example, a trial of some 
importance for a topic under investigation took place 
in London in 1785. The only evidence hitherto used 
in dealing with the incident had been an account pub- 
lished at the time in a London paper. More and bet- 
ter sources were wanted. What would they be? 
Court records naturally. What was the court? The 
Old Bailey, which still exists. Have the records for 
1785 been preserved? From a visit to the court it 
is learned that a stenographic account of the trials 
was published in 1785, and a copy of this record was 
found in the Guild Hall library. 

On another occasion the investigator was inter- 
ested in an incident that took place in Holland. A 
Frenchman had been extradited at the request of the 
government of Louis XVI. The incident had been 
written up wholly from French sources. Do no 
Dutch sources exist? The arrest was made in Am- 
sterdam. The council of Amsterdam would be 
obliged to correspond with the government at The 
Hague. Doubtless material could be found in the city 
archives of Amsterdam and in the state archives 
at The Hague. Inquiry at these two places brought 
the documents to light. A somewhat different case 
would be where one knew that certain material had 

[40] 



CHOICE OF A SUBJECT 
existed, — a newspaper, for example, — but did not 
know where it could be found. A search in one of 
the great libraries of Europe, London or Paris, 
would probably lead to the discovery of a copy. 

Oral tradition should be sought for in the place 
where the incident took place and with the aid of the 
local antiquarian. He may have discovered the ma- 
terial needed, but the knowledge of his discovery 
may never have gone beyond the bounds of the town. 
In the search for material, one thing leads to 
another, sometimes in the most extraordinary way. 
One summer, some years ago, I visited Aix-en-Pro- 
vence for the purpose of making the acquaintance of 
M. Guibal, professor in the University of Aix, who 
had written a very exhaustive and scholarly work 
on Mirabeau and the Provence. M. Guibal was not 
in the city, but a gentleman of whom I inquired, on 
learning of my mission, introduced me to M. Mout- 
tet, who for years had been a student of the life of 
Mirabeau in Provence and was full of valuable in- 
formation. He, in his turn, made me acquainted with 
M. Paul Arbaud, who had in his possession a large 
number of important Mirabeau manuscripts hitherto 
unused by the biographers of Mirabeau. 

These illustrations may give some slight idea of 
the way in which source material is brought to light 
when no trace of it exists in printed bibliographies. 
It may be well to add that the search for sources 
does not end until the printed work comes from the 
press. The discovery of fresh material may take 

[41] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

place while the narrative is being written and neces- 
sitate the recasting of a large part of the text. The 
path of research is a rocky one and not always pleas- 
ant to travel. 

In working over his manuscript sources, or rare 
printed matter, the young investigator is apt to con- 
tent himself with notes giving the substance of the 
source. That method is often a bad one. When the 
time comes to use the notes, the investigator may be 
far from his sources and it may be absolutely neces- 
sary to know the exact wording of the text. It is 
much wiser to make extracts in the exact language 
of the document, and when there is the slightest 
doubt as to whether certain parts should be omitted 
or not, to copy the whole document. It is safer in 
the long run. Another suggestion for the beginner, 
whose time may be limited when he is abroad for re- 
search work, is to make use of a copyist. When the 
material has been found and it is simply a matter of 
copying it, the investigator cannot afford to give his 
time to it when a copyist will do the work even bet- 
ter and for a few cents a page. 

Something has already been written about the na- 
ture of material used in the reconstruction of the 
historical past. It is as varied as human activities. 
To enumerate it all would be impossible; the labor 
would be of doubtful utility. For the effective use of 
the sources, it is important to know the main divi- 
sions and subdivisions employed by the writers on 
method in the classification of the sources and the 

[42] 



CHOICE OF A SUBJECT 



reasons for this classification. The two main divi- 
sions are remains and tradition. The ground for this 
division is readily understood. 

The first group comprises all objects coming down 
to us from the past, actual products of man's social 
activities. They came into existence as the result of 
man's daily needs and were not created for the pur- 
pose of acquainting posterity with the nature of 
man's activities. If these objects later found their 
way into museums, such a disposition of them was 
not anticipated by their creators. Sources of this 
kind, infinite in variety as they are, ranging from dif- 
ferent kinds of breakfast food, through clothing, 
buildings, machinery, works of literature and art 
to the most trivial ornaments of human vanity, can 
supply us with but a small part of the information 
we need concerning man's unique social evolution. 
They reveal to us the results of actions, not actions 
themselves. To interpret these remains is a most dif- 
ficult process, yielding, often, very questionable re- 
sults. It will be remembered what a false fabric of 
inference concerning the Aryan race was built upon 
the uncertain foundation of the common root words 
in the European and Indian languages. The fabric 
has been demolished, not because the common root 
words do not exist, but because their existence did 
not justify the inferences drawn from them. With 
this class of sources, the beginner will have little to 
do. A detailed treatment of them will be found in 
Bernheim's work. 

[43] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

The second group of sources is called tradition. 
Some of these, from one point of view, might be 
treated as remains, but the significant characteristic 
of the group, the characteristic which distinguishes 
it from remains proper, is the fact that it contains 
the records of the impressions made upon human 
brains by man's social activities. The events took 
place, someone saw them and made a record of what 
he thought he saw, and that record has been handed 
down to us. It may be preserved in three ways, by 
word of mouth, in writing, or pictorially, and thus 
we have oral, written and pictorial tradition. Oral 
tradition, after a time, may disappear or become 
written tradition, so that in the end the forms of the 
record are chiefly two and more largely written than 
oral. In the present generation, through the use of 
photography, the volume and value of the pictorial 
record have been very much increased. 

In the first division of sources, — remains, — we can 
see the actual objects that have come down to us 
from past times; in the second, — tradition, — contain- 
ing the impressions made upon individual minds by 
man's past activities, what we see is not the act, but 
what the witness thought the act was. r 

In dealing with a tradition, it must be remembered 
that at least one human brain stands between us and 
the fact. We can see the fact only indirectly. In deal- 
ing with the affirmation of a witness, — which may be 
something quite different from the fact itself, — in 
trying to determine how true the affirmation is, we 

[44] 



CHOICE OF A SUBJECT 
must always keep the personality of the witness in 
view. This profound difference between remains and 
tradition inevitably gives rise to a difference of 
method in handling the two groups of sources. But 
the value of the tradition is determined not alone 
by the personality of the witness; the character of 
the sources must also be taken into consideration. 

The division of tradition into three groups rests 
upon the manner in which the tradition is formulated. 
It is not a matter of scientific indifference whether 
the tradition is passed on orally, in writing, or pic- 
torially. The value of the affirmation is affected by 
the form in which it expresses itself. The first ac- 
count of what the witness has seen, if formulated at 
once, may be as valuable in the oral as in the writ- 
ten form. But this is not true when the affirmation 
is repeated. If the impression is committed to writ- 
ing, it is fixed and not injuriously affected by lack of 
memory; oral tradition is fluid, each repetition dif- 
fering more and more from the original, until, in 
time, the affirmation becomes practically worthless. 
This is true whether the affirmation is repeated year 
after year by the original witness, or is passed on 
from individual to individual. Oral tradition is, 
then, as a class, much less reliable than written 
tradition. 

Pictorial tradition occupies a middle ground be- 
tween oral and written tradition. The impression 
made by an individual or by a scene upon the artist 
is fixed on canvas or in marble; in this respect — its 

[45] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

fixity — pictorial tradition resembles written tradi- 
tion. It differs from it in the greater difficulty offered 
by the medium — paint or marble — and the greater 
completeness with which the record must be made. 
The result is that there are greater possibilities of 
error in the pictorial record than in the written. The 
written record cannot, however, take the place of 
the pictorial record. No written description of 
Washington could give us the same clear conception 
of his personal appearance that could be obtained 
from an excellent portrait or statue by a contempo- 
rary artist. 

Written tradition itself may be divided into nu- 
merous groups, differing from each other in value. 
The same event — for example, a scene in the great 
French assembly of 1789 — may be described in the 
minutes of the assembly (Proces-verbal), in a news- 
paper, in a pamphlet, in a letter of a member to his 
constituents, in a letter of another member to his 
wife, in a letter of a diplomat residing in Paris at 
the time, or in the Memoires of a member. Here are 
five groups of material, official records, newspapers, 
pamphlets, letters and Memoires, differing from 
each other in value because of the character of the 
source. The experienced investigator understands 
the general valuation to put upon each. Diplomatic 
correspondence intended for publication, party pro- 
grams, political speeches, war bulletins, illustrate 
some of the groups of written tradition which are 
notoriously untrustworthy. Something will be said in 

[46] 



CHOICE OF A SUBJECT 

a later chapter of the way in which these groups are 
evaluated. At present, it is only necessary to point 
out that the reason for classifying the sources, in- 
stead of leaving them a heterogeneous mass, is to en- 
able the historian to determine more readily the 
value of the individual sources, by knowing the value 
of the class to which they belong. 

Having selected a subject for investigation, col- 
lected and classified the sources, the next step in the 
process is the criticism of the sources for the purpose 
of determining the value of the evidence they con- 
tain and the relation of the different witnesses to 
each other. 



[47] 



Ill 

CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES: 
GENUINENESS 

The sources collected for the purpose of restoring 
the historical past do not contain the facts, but the 
affirmations of witnesses concerning the facts. The 
fact is what actually took place; the affirmation is a 
statement by a witness of what he believed took 
place. The fact is established by the agreement of 
two or more independent witnesses. Before, how- 
ever, the affirmations in the different sources can be 
used to establish the fact, each source must be evalu- 
ated and the relationship of the sources to each 
other must be studied to determine whether they are 
dependent or independent. There is nothing novel in 
this procedure ; it is simply the method of every day 
rendered conscious and precise. The man on the 
street does not receive the testimony of every witness 
with equal confidence, but in a rough and ready way 
puts a value upon the statements of each. The his- 
torian has carefully considered the reasons for trust- 
ing or distrusting the affirmations of a witness and 
has arranged these reasons in an orderly manner, 
together with the tests to be applied to the sources. 
If much of the work of historians in the past has 

[48] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

had no permanent value because of the failure to 
base it upon exhaustive research, as much more has 
been discarded because it showed little or no trace 
of the critical evaluation of the sources. The one is 
as indispensable as the other. All the sources on a 
topic must be collected and all must be critically 
evaluated. Such work consumes a vast amount of 
time and only a limited topic can be investigated, 
but what of that? The end of scientific historical 
work is reliable, scientific results, and nothing obliges 
the investigator to undertake more than he can do 
thoroughly. Scientific historical work is the only kind 
worth while, the only kind which makes progress in 
historical reconstruction possible. Let the young in- 
vestigator set his standards high and then limit the 
scope of his work so that it will be possible to live 
up to the standards he has set. When he has once 
learned what excellent work means, he will be con- 
tent with nothing less, if he be animated by the true 
spirit of scholarship. 

The whole problem of the evaluation of a source 
is one of the relation of the witness to the fact re- 
ported. It resolves itself into certain minor prob- 
lems: (i) Is the source genuine or is it a forgery? 
(2) Who wrote it and when and where was it writ- 
ten? (3) Do all the affirmations contained in the 
source relate to the witness's own observations or 
are some of them hearsay? (4) In the latter case, 
where was the information obtained? (5) Finally, 

[ 49 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



all these questions having been answered, what is 
the value of such a source? 

Naturally the first test to which a source must be 
subjected is that for genuineness. If it is a forgery, 
that is, not what it pretends to be, either in whole or 
in part (interpolation), it clearly cannot be used as 
evidence. To the uninitiated or credulous there 
would seem to be little opportunity today for the ex- 
ercise of scepticism concerning the genuineness of 
the sources of modern history. All the well-known 
forgeries are supposed to be ancient affairs, and the 
assumption is that we have left forgeries behind us, 
together with the stage-coach. Unfortunately that is 
not so. To forge successfully is more difficult today 
than in the credulous Middle Ages, but motives for 
forgeries still exist and the only protection against 
them is eternal vigilance. Every bit of evidence 
should be critically scanned before it is accepted as 
genuine. And it must be remembered that the docu- 
ment as a whole may be genuine, but may contain a 
forged interpolated portion. 

Forged material is found in all the groups of 
sources, in remains as well as in the various kinds of 
tradition. Every traveller knows to his sorrow how 
wide-spread and difficult of detection the activity of 
the forger is in works of art and relics. Antique rugs, 
vases, paintings, statuary, bronzes, are so skilfully 
reproduced that even the connoisseur may be de- 
ceived. I was once told by a distinguished French 
sculptor who was a collector of Greek vases that the 

[50] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

modern reproductions, passed off for originals, were 
often so good that he could settle the question of 
genuineness only by scratching the clay. Collections 
of ancient pottery and of parchments have been sold 
for large sums to museums; later investigation has 
shown that they were skilful forgeries. Two of the 
most famous cases are those of the Moabite pottery 
and the Sardinian manuscripts. 

After the discovery in 1866, in the land of Moab, 
of the Mesa stone with its valuable inscription, there 
were offered for sale by a dealer in antiques in Jeru- 
salem certain old Hebrew inscriptions similar to that 
on the Mesa stone. In the spring of 1872, there ap- 
peared at the same place certain pieces of pottery 
and, later in the year, vases, urns, etc., with inscrip- 
tions and drawings. There were 2,000 pieces in all. 
The articles had been brought to Jerusalem by an 
Arab, Selim, who had been in the employ of Euro- 
pean excavators. The dealer in Jerusalem, charged 
with fraud, went to the place indicated by Selim, in 
company with those interested, and found other 
articles of a like nature. Although criticism was not 
silenced, many of the objects were bought for the 
Berlin museum. Careful criticism has shown that the 
articles are counterfeits, probably the work of Selim. 

The Sardinian forgery is even more interesting. 
In the years 1863 to 1865, there were published in 
Italy letters, biographies, poems and other literary 
fragments, supposed to have been composed on the 
island of Sardinia, in the period from the eighth cen- 

[51] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

tury to the fifteenth. The find created a great sensa- 
tion, for it was not supposed that such a state of cul- 
ture had ever existed in Sardinia. After publication, 
the originals were deposited in the library at Cagli- 
ari. A heated discussion having arisen in Italy over 
the genuineness of the material, some of the origi- 
nals were submitted to the Academy of Sciences at 
Berlin for examination. Jaffe investigated the ma- 
terial of the manuscripts and the handwriting; 
Tobler, the language and literature; Dove, the his- 
torical contents. They established beyond the possi- 
bility of a doubt that the material was forged. 

The Forged Decretals, the Gift of Constantine, 
the poems of Ossian and Chatterton, are forgeries 
known to every schoolboy. The list might be ex- 
tended almost indefinitely. Those wishing to pursue 
the matter further should consult Bernheim, where 
additional illustrations and references to the litera- 
ture of the subject will be found. 

The student of modern history is much more likely 
to encounter forgeries in the subgroup of written 
tradition than elsewhere. Very recent examples and 
very interesting ones, illustrating the necessity of 
being at all times on one's guard, are the third vol- 
ume of the Memoires of Bailly, The Journal of a 
Spy in Paris during the Reign of Terror, and the 
letters of Marie Antoinette. 

The third volume of the Memoires of Bailly was 
not supposed to be the work of Bailly himself. It bore 
the title, Supplement aux Memoires de Bailly and 

[52] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 



appeared for the first time in the folio edition of 
Bailly's Memoires published in 1804, with the title 
Avant-Moniteur. The title-page further announced 
that the volume was made up of material drawn 

from "the unpublished notes of the late M. , 

member of the constituent assembly." In a footnote 
in the folio edition, it was stated that u the author of 
these notes [was] a witness at Versailles of the ex- 
citing scenes within the assembly and of the criminal 
and thoughtless measures which prepared the insur- 
rection of October 5 and 6." When the Memoires 
were reprinted in 1822 by Berville and Barriere in 
three volumes under the title Memoires of Bailly, 
this anonymous volume constituted the third volume. 
In the histories of the French revolution written 
since 1822, the edition of Bailly's Memoires of that 
date is made use of and the third volume is referred 
to as if it were the work of Bailly. Although the 
work was anonymous, there was no suspicion that it 
might be a forgery. 

No serious attempt was made to determine the 
authorship of the volume, M. Tourneux suggesting, 
however, in his bibliography of Paris during the 
revolution, that it might be the work of Camus, a 
member of the assembly. 

That was the status of the case when I began the 
examination of the volume with a class of under- 
graduates, hoping to solve the problem of author- 
ship. The volume was written in the form of a diary, 
giving day by day an account of what took place in 

[53] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

the assembly. I assigned a certain number of para- 
graphs to different members of the class, asking them 
to compare the text with- the text of contemporary 
daily papers which reported the proceedings of the 
assembly. When the reports were made, it was dis- 
covered that a paragraph of. the text of the third 
volume bore a very close resemblance to the text of 
one of the newspapers, Le point du jour; the two 
were evidently related. Further comparison revealed 
other passages almost literally the same and a com- 
parison of the text of the volume with the Courrier 
de Provence showed a more surprising situation. 
Page after page in the third volume of the Memoires 
and in the Courrier de Provence were almost iden- 
tically the same, the third person of the paper being 
changed to the first person of the diary. What 
material was not found in the Point du jour and the 
Courrier de Provence was discovered in a third 
paper, Les revolutions de Paris. For these facts, but 
one explanation was possible; someone had com- 
posed this anonymous "diary" by piecing together 
extracts from the three newspapers. In other words, 
the third volume was a forgery. 

Who had done it and when had it been done? It 
was noticed that the anonymous volume appeared 
as a "supplement" to the folio form of Bailly's 
Memoires published in 1804, with the title Avant- 
Moniteur. That compound word — Avant-Moniteur 
— proved to be the key to the whole situation. The 
Moniteur was a daily newspaper, the first number 

[54] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

appearing November 24, 1789. In 1795, the paper 
being perhaps the most important daily then pub- 
lished and containing in its files a running history of 
the revolution, it was decided by the publishers to 
fill the gap in the files between May 5, 1789, the date 
of the first meeting of the States-General and No- 
vember 25, 1789, by supplementary numbers, writ- 
ten with the use of source material and printed in 
the form of the newspaper itself. This was done. 
In 1804, when the Memoires of Bailly was pub- 
lished, this introductory volume was out of print 
and it would have been expensive to reprint it. The 
editors contracted for an edition of the Memoires 
in folio form, the title-page to bear the additional 
word Avant-Moniteur, or introduction to the Moni- 
teur. But the first number of the Moniteur appeared 
November 24, and the last events recorded in the 
Memoires of Bailly were those of October 2. How 
could the gap be filled? In the same way in which 
the old introduction to the Moniteur had been com- 
posed, by piecing together extracts from newspa- 
pers. Had the extracts been pieced together with 
an indication of the provenance of each, the proce- 
dure would have been perfectly regular, but when the 
editor changed the person from the third to the first, 
arranged the extracts in the form of a diary and 
gave them to the world as the "notes" of u a late 
member of the constituent assembly," he was com- 
mitting a forgery/Moreover, it was a senseless for- 
gery, for nothing was gained by it. A volume com- 

[55] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

posed of extracts from newspapers would be useful 
to one to whom the newspapers are not accessible, 
but no historian would venture to use this forgery 
composed of extracts. It is useful today as an ex- 
ample of how that sort of thing is done and as a 
warning to investigators to accept nothing on faith. 
The Journal of a Spy in Paris during the Reign 
of T error } January-July 1794, hy Raoul Hesdin 
(John Murray, London, 1895), is one of the most 
daring of modern forgeries. There were circum- 
stances attending its publication which aroused sus- 
picion and led to a critical examination of the book; 
the editor had withheld both his name and the loca- 
tion of the manuscript, two suspicious circumstances. 
An examination of the text gave abundant proof that 
the work was a forgery. Facts were recorded before 
they occurred, the error of time being sometimes a 
few days, sometimes as great as six months. No ex- 
planation of such premature knowledge could be 
given except that the work had not been written from 
day to day, but was a later compilation by an indi- 
vidual who was not sufficiently careful of his dates. 
The volume was criticised in detail in the English 
Historical Review (July 1896), and the charge of 
forgery was made. The author, still guarding his 
anonymity, wrote to the Athenaeum (March 28, 
April 18, May 16, 1896), defending himself by very 
specious arguments, but unsuccessfully. The reason 
for the publication of such a forgery is not evident. 
It may have been the work of a practical joker; it 

[56] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

may have been a political pamphlet, judging from 
the closing words of the preface, "can the English- 
man who lives, as the late Sir H. Maine said, in 
fcece Romuli, altogether afford in 1895, to neglect 
the terrible object lesson afforded to him by Paris 
one hundred and one years ago?" It was written by 
an Englishman, evidently, by an Englishman who 
knew much about the French revolution and France, 
but who was inaccurate in scholarship, although pos- 
sessing a brilliant imagination. 

The successful forgery of letters of famous per- 
sonages is a lucrative business, as such letters can be 
sold for a good price. The number of forged letters 
with the signature of Marie Antoinette is so large 
as to make the work of her biographers exceedingly 
difficult. The volumes of her letters published by 
Hunolstein and Feuillet de Conches contain a large 
number of forgeries, and led to a careful attempt 
to make a complete list of the genuine letters. This 
collection, by La Rocheterie and Beaucourt (Paris, 
1895), is the most successful effort yet made to pub- 
lish a critical collection of the letters of the unfortu- 
nate queen. Genuine letters exist, many have been 
published and some reproduced in facsimile, so that 
the forger has at his command abundant material to 
aid him in reproducing both the handwriting and the 
style. The introduction to the work of La Rocheterie 
and Beaucourt supplies a valuable account of the 
methods used in distinguishing genuine letters from 
forgeries. 

[ 57 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

A recent monograph on the early French revolu- 
tion, by Dr. Otto Becker, furnishes a good illustra- 
tion of the relation of the problem of genuineness 
to the value of historical reconstruction. To prove 
that on June 20, 1789, Marie Antoinette believed 
that the wisest policy for Louis XVI to follow was 
to take the side of the third estate, a letter of the 
queen, written on that day, was quoted. Dr. Becker 
found the text of the letter in a French work pub- 
lished at Paris in 1858. The collection of letters pub- 
lished in 1896 by La Rocheterie and Beaucourt con- 
tains no letter dated June 20, 1789. Is the letter 
quoted by Dr. Becker genuine ? He did not even raise 
the question. It may be ; it may not be. It should be 
tested. 

In the first place, the French work, where the text 
is found, should be examined to discover, if possible, 
where the original manuscript is. If no help is to be 
found in this work, the task of determining the fal- 
sity or genuineness of the letter is a difficult one, for 
it is much more easy to forge a printed letter than a 
manuscript. In the first case, one must reproduce 
only the language; in the last, language and hand- 
writing. To reproduce the language is not difficult. 
From sentences taken from genuine letters, it is 
possible to construct a letter quite unlike any letter 
existing. Some of the forgeries of the letters of 
Marie Antoinette were detected by comparing sen- 
tences from the suspected letter with the text of gen- 
uine letters. This sort of work can be done, however, 

[58] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

only by one familiar with the whole collection, and 
consumes a vast amount of time. In the second place, 
if the test of style fails, something may be done 
toward establishment of the probability of forgery 
by comparing the views contained in the letters with 
the general attitude of the queen at the time as 
learned from other sources. If it is impossible to 
reconcile these views with her general attitude, the 
presumption of forgery is raised, although it may 
not be possible to prove the forgery with certainty. 

Besides the cases of forgery already cited, there 
are many others quite as important. Sometimes the 
authenticity of sources is questioned for a long time 
and the question finally left unsettled. At other times, 
after a long discussion, the evidence may seem to be 
in favor of the genuineness of the material. The 
Memoires of Talleyrand, published at Paris in 1891, 
is an example of the first kind, the so-called "Casket 
Letters" of Mary Queen of Scots an example of the 
second. The whole case of the guilt or innocence of 
the queen rests on the genuineness of these letters; 
recent investigations make out a very convincing 
case in favor of their genuineness. 

Determining the genuineness of written tradition, 
letters, Memoires, etc., is not work for a novice. If 
we have what pretends to be the original manuscript, 
the task is much less difficult than when we have to 
work without it. In the first case, we can examine the 
paper and the handwriting. It is difficult to forge a 
manuscript in the year 19 13 and make the paper 

[59 J 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

look as if it were a hundred years old. It is quite as 
difficult to reproduce successfully the handwriting of 
another; for a manuscript of any length, it is prac- 
tically impossible. A comparison of the forgery with 
the genuine handwriting of the individual to whom 
it is attributed generally lays bare the deception. 
When we have nothing but the printed source, we 
are obliged to depend on style and content. The 
forgery of the Journal, referred to above, was de- 
tected by a study of its contents. The writer knew 
too much; he was acquainted with events before they 
took place. It is very difficult, practically impossible, 
not to make that blunder. 

Imagine, for example, that one of us today should 
attempt to forge the diary of an American soldier 
in the Philippines, during the first month of active 
fighting. Before beginning the work, we are well in- 
formed about the war, but we must forget all we 
know about the later events or that later knowledge 
will reveal itself in the diary we are about to write. 
Such a total forgetting is impossible and to the skil- 
ful eye the deception is visible. The contents can be 
tested, however, only by one well acquainted with 
the history of the period. 



[60] 



IV 

CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES: 
LOCALIZATION 

To say that a source is genuine, is to say nothing of 
the value of the affirmations contained in it : a letter 
written by an idiot or a knave may be genuine, but 
largely valueless as historical material. On the other 
hand, a manuscript may have all the earmarks of 
genuineness, but contain no outward indication of 
authorship or of time and place of writing. Before 
it can be used, it must be localized, that is to say, it 
must, if possible, be assigned to a certain author, 
writing in a certain place and at a certain time. To 
illustrate the necessity of this information, suppose 
that a subject were being investigated and someone 
offered some important evidence bearing upon it. 
He was not an eyewitness, but had read somewhere 
what he reported. He did not know where he had 
read it, who the author was, nor when or where it 
had been written. How much weight would a careful 
investigator attach to such information? It should 
never be forgotten that the value of the affirmations 
in a source depends on the character of the source, 
on the personality of the witness (who wrote it?) 
and the time (when written?) and place (where 

[61] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

written?) of writing. The first problem, that of the 
character of the source, has been dealt with under 
the classification of the sources; it remains to treat 
the last three. 

The witness is the medium through whom comes 
our knowledge of the fact; the better the medium, 
the better the information. Hence the importance of 
knowing as much as possible about the writer. In 
this respect, the work of the historian is more diffi- 
cult than that of the lawyer in the courtroom, who 
has the living witness before him. The witness of 
the historian is often a personage concerning whom 
it may be possible to learn but little, and yet it is 
necessary to evaluate his testimony from our knowl- 
edge of him. The problem falls into two parts : ( i ) 
Who was the witness, that is, what was his name? 
and (2) What kind of a person was he? The first 
part is a problem only when the name is not given. 
How do we determine the authorship? If we have a 
manuscript, the handwriting may put us on the track 
of the writer. If the manuscript has been lost, the 
style may help us, if it is very individual. One would 
recognize the style of Carlyle almost as readily as 
Carlyle's rugged face. But suppose neither supplies 
a clue, what then? We must turn to the contents and 
endeavor to form an idea of the man from what he 
has written. 

A good illustration is the Journal d y Adrien Du- 
quesnoy, published in 1894. The work consists of a 
series of letters written from Versailles and Paris in 

[62] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

1789 and 1790. Two manuscripts exist, one in the 
National Library in Paris and the other in a private 
collection. They are not in the handwriting of Du- 
quesnoy, but interspersed in the letters of the private 
collection are letters in Duquesnoy's handwriting in 
which he refers to his "Bulletins." The editor also 
found some corrections in the handwriting of Du- 
quesnoy on the letters of the private collection. This 
was his ground for attributing the letters to Duques- 
noy. When the publication appeared, the authorship 
of Duquesnoy was denied for the reason that the 
letters were not in his handwriting and that the in- 
ternal evidence indicated that at least the earlier 
bulletins could not have been written by him. Hand- 
writing is not, of course, a final test of authorship; a 
letter may have been dictated or copied. 

Having had occasion to make use of these bul- 
letins, I undertook to solve the problem of author- 
ship. It was necessary to show at the outset that all 
the bulletins examined were written by the same per- 
son. This was proved by cross references from one 
bulletin to another and by the appearance of similar 
expressions in two or more bulletins. The unity of 
the bulletins being established, search was instituted 
for matter indicating who the writer was. The fol- 
lowing facts were established: (1) He was a mem- 
ber of the third estate; (2) he represented Barrois; 
(3) his bulletins were addressed to the people of 
Lorraine; (4) he was on very familiar terms with 
the deputies from Nancy; (5) he was a member of 

[63] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

the Committee on Food Supply. What member of 
the assembly would those requirements fit? The Com- 
mittee on Food Supply was made up of one represen- 
tative from each of the generalities, or administra- 
tive divisions, into which France was divided. The 
list of this committee was found in the printed rec- 
ords of the assembly and opposite the generality of 
Lorraine was the name, Duquesnoy. An examination 
of the biography of Duquesnoy showed that he rep- 
resented Barrois in Lorraine; that he had formerly 
lived at Briey in Barrois, which he represented as a 
member of the third estate, but that he had lived for 
some years previous to 1789 in Nancy, where he had 
been a man of prominence. He was naturally well 
acquainted with the representatives of Nancy in the 
assembly. The author of the bulletins was undoubt- 
edly Duquesnoy. 

To learn the name of the writer of a source it is 
often necessary to examine the entire source, and 
even then it is sometimes impossible to solve the 
problem. At other times, the solution is found within 
the compass of a few pages. If the author of Bailly's 
Memoir es was not known, it could be determined by 
reading the few pages of the Memoires included in 
"The Oath of the Tennis Court," one of my Source 
Studies on the French Revolution. On the day of 
"The Oath of the Tennis Court," June 20, 1789, 
the writer of the Memoires represents himself as re- 
ceiving letters from the master of ceremonies noti- 
fying him that there would be no session of the 

[64] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 



assembly on that day. He replied that on the day be- 
fore he had adjourned the assembly until the morn- 
ing of the twentieth, and it would be necessary for 
it to meet. We infer from this that he was the pre- 
siding officer of the assembly. After replying to the 
master of ceremonies, the writer states that he called 
together the secretaries of the assembly and that 
they decided the session must be held. He went with 
them to the hall and, although refused admittance, 
declared the assembly in session. Later in the day he 
opened and presided over the session in the tennis 
court, where, as he wrote, "I asked on account of 
my rank as president, to take the oath first." All of 
this information is found in nine pages. Bailly's 
name is not mentioned, but it is clear that the writer 
was president of the assembly on June 20, 1789. 
What was his name? In the same collection of 
sources are the minutes of the assembly for June 20, 
signed by u Bailly, President." Knowing now who the 
writer was, there is no difficulty in gathering infor- 
mation in regard to him. 

In a study on "The Royal Session of June 23, 
1789," also one of the Source Stuftes on the French 
Revolution, is an unsigned letter written from Paris, 
June 29, 1789. Who was the writer? The original 
is in Italian. The letter opens with the sentence, 
'Tuesday, the 23d of the present month, was a very 
interesting day as I have informed the Most Excel- 
lent Senate in my respectful communication." Here 
is enough material to enable us to solve the problem. 

[65] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

The letter was clearly written in France, by an Ital- 
ian ambassador, to a government with a senate at 
its head. What government in Italy was governed by 
a senate in 1789? Only one, Venice. The letter was 
written, then, by the Venetian ambassador. Who was 
the Venetian ambassador to the French court in 
1789? The records in the Venetian archives would 
answer that question: his name was Antonio Capello. 
To know what kind of man the witness was is the 
main object of the efforts of the critic, for upon the 
character of the witness depends the value of his 
testimony. Knowledge of the writer's name is of no 
particular value, if, after the name is known, it re- 
veals nothing further about the man. To know that 
a certain unsigned letter was written by Jefferson is 
valuable information, for we know who Jefferson 
was and can make use of our knowledge of his char- 
acter in estimating the value of what he wrote. But 
to know that another unsigned letter was written by 
John Smith is not at all valuable, if John Smith is 
an unknown person. This consideration raises the 
further question as to how we can evaluate the testi- 
mony of a witness who is known to us only through 
the written record he has left us. This problem dif- 
fers only in kind from the one we have been dealing 
with. Instead of learning the name of the writer 
and then obtaining information about his personality 
from other sources, we are unable to learn his name, 
or his name does not help us, and we are forced to 
base our judgment of the man upon what he has 

[66] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

written. The question runs, then, "What kind of a 
man would write a letter or a book like this?" Read- 
ing between the lines, we make note of everything 
that may help us to form an opinion touching his 
natural ability, his education, his position in life, his 
opportunity to observe what he has described, his 
prejudices, his honesty and his ability to describe 
what he has seen. 

From a letter in my Studies, written June 24, 
1789, take the following extracts as an example of 
what may be learned from a short letter concerning 
the personality of the writer: "I passed Monday and 
Tuesday at Versailles. Monday it was announced 
to us on our arrival, that the royal session was 
adjourned. It rained. Guards prevented the deputies 
from entering the hall. It was a frightful spectacle 
for the good citizens to see our worthy representa- 
tives running in the streets without knowing where 
to assemble. The Recollets had the shamelessness to 
refuse their church. The cure of Saint-Louis offered 
his. There I was the witness of the most beautiful 
spectacle that I have seen in my life, the union of 
149 deputies of the clergy. . . . The next morning 
Versailles was overrun by the crowd of strangers 
gathered for the session. The Archbishop of Paris 
and the guard of the seals were hooted at, derided, 
spit upon and so abused that they would have per- 
ished from rage and shame, if they had had any 
spirit. . . . The king came. As M. Necker did not 
precede him, we were in consternation. A handful of 

[67] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

paid children ran beside the carriage crying: Long 
live the king. Some valets, some spies joined the 
chorus ; all the respectable people and the crowd kept 
silent. . . . The third estate remained assembled 
until three o'clock. . . . M. de Breze came to tell 
them to separate. 'The king,' said Mirabeau, 'can 
have our throats cut; tell him we are awaiting death; 
but he cannot hope to separate us until we have made 
a constitution.' ... In a word, all showed a Roman 
firmness and decided to seal our liberties with their 
blood. All Paris is in an uproar; the Palais-Royal is 
as full as an egg; the Due d'Orleans is rapturously 
applauded everywhere." 

What kind of a man wrote this letter? Clearly an 
educated man, for he writes exceedingly well. He is 
evidently young, for he is full of enthusiasm, impul- 
sive in his utterances, interested in what is going on, 
physically able to be about in Paris and Versailles, 
mingling with the crowd in foul weather as well as 
in fair. He was an eyewitness to such of the events 
of June 23 as could be seen by the active man-in-the- 
street. Not being a member of the assembly, he knew 
about what went on in the hall only through hearsay. 
He is a radical, an enthusiastic supporter of the third 
estate and the revolution and, for these reasons, not 
an unbiased observer. He does not question very 
critically the information that comes to him — as for 
instance, the two appearances of Breze, a thing that 
did not take place and concerning which he might 
easily have informed himself — nor does he weigh his 

[68] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

words in describing what he has seen or what has 
been reported to him. These things render his report 
inaccurate and untrustworthy. In reading it, we feel 
that we have before us the statement of a partisan 
and not of a fair-minded, unprejudiced witness. All 
this, and it is much, we can learn from the reading 
of the letter. The knowledge that the letter was writ- 
ten by Camille Desmoulins will not lead to any seri- 
ous modification of the portrait we have sketched. 

Acquaintance with the character of the source — 
letter, newspaper, memoir, etc. — and with the per- 
sonality of the writer does not offer a complete basis 
for the evaluation of a written tradition. The char- 
acter of the source may be satisfactory. It may be 
a private letter, for example, and the witness may 
be intelligent, well informed, willing and able to tell 
the truth, and yet the record may not be satisfactory 
because of the space of time intervening between the 
occurrence of the event and the making of the rec- 
ord. The longer the interval of time, the more un- 
trustworthy the record; it is a problem in memory. 
The more remote the event described by a witness, 
the less he can remember about it and the more un- 
certain he is as to the truth of what he can recall. A 
witness wholly dependent upon his memory never 
knows when he is telling the truth, no matter how 
honestly he may try to do so. To take an oath that 
one will tell the truth is equal to attempting to lift 
one's self by one's own bootstraps. 

The memory has been experimented with in the 

[6 9 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

laboratory. A person is allowed to inspect a picture 
and the following day, without having seen the pic- 
ture again, is requested to describe it and to under- 
score everything he feels certain about, everything he 
would be willing to swear to in court. Such a record 
is made several times, at intervals of a few days, the 
witness writing what he can recall about the picture 
and underscoring what he is certain about. A com- 
parison of these different records shows two things : 
( I ) The record grows steadily more untrustworthy, 
but (2) the certainty of the witness concerning the 
truth of certain things does not decrease. 

The significant point for the historian is that the 
things about which the witness is confident are, for 
the most part, untrue. Other experiments have ex- 
plained this curious phenomenon. The images which 
pass through the brain in the attempt to recall the 
past are composed of genuine recollections of past 
experiences and pure creations of the imagination. 
The genuine recall is hazy and incomplete, while the 
purely imaginative images are clear and detailed. 
The fact that a witness affirms that he can recall 
clearly some incident that happened months or years 
before does not prove the truth of what he recalls. 
From these experiments, at least one thing is clear, 
namely, the longer the witness delays committing his 
recollections to paper, the less valuable they are. The 
time of writing is, then, a very important matter. 

When a source is not dated, or the writer does not 
state when he wrote his recollections, how can we 

[70] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

fix the date? The problem is solved, generally from 
a study of the text, by fixing two termini: the termi- 
nus post quern and the terminus ante quern, the date 
after which and the date before which the account 
was written. To do this, a considerable knowledge 
of the history of the period in which the witness 
lived is necessary. The work must have been written 
after the date of the last event mentioned in the book 
and before the death of the writer. To fix the termi- 
nus post quern we read the text carefully, noting the 
dates of the events mentioned; the latest date is the 
terminus. But to fix only the terminus post quern is 
not sufficiently exact. The account was clearly written 
after a certain date, say 1789, but how much later? 
Perhaps the writer did not die until 18 15, and we 
have a leeway of twenty-six years. Something must 
be done to eliminate a part of this long stretch of 
time, to draw the terminus ante quern nearer to the 
terminus post quern. 

As the one limit is fixed by what the writer knows, 
the other is determined by what he apparently does 
not know. Suppose, for example, the last event men- 
tioned in the source took place in the spring of 1789, 
and suppose that the work was written by a distin- 
guished French nobleman, a man much attached to 
the old institutions, who afterward, in the summer 
of 1789, emigrated. Suppose furthermore that in 
dealing with the events of the revolution up to June, 
1789, no mention is made of the action of the third 
estate on June 17, when it declared itself the na- 

[71] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

tional assembly, of the "Oath of the Tennis Court" 
of June 20, of the "Royal Session" of June 23, or 
of the great uprising of July, 1789, and the fall of 
the Bastille. Supposing all these things, is it likely 
that the work was written after June, 1789? Is it 
likely, if the book had been written after these events 
and by such a man, that he would not have referred 
to them in some way? It is very unlikely. 

To fix the date of a letter may be easier than to 
determine when a witness wrote his memoir or recol- 
lections. Take, for example, the letter of Camille 
Desmoulins, already quoted. Suppose it were not 
dated, would it be possible to fix the date from the 
contents of the letter? Near the close of the letter 
Desmoulins writes: U M. Necker gave his resigna- 
tion; all the deputies went yesterday evening to say 
farewell." As it is a well-known fact that the depu- 
ties called on Necker on the evening of June 23, it 
is clear that Desmoulins wrote his letter the next 
day, June 24, probably in the morning, as he does 
not mention the fact that the majority of the clergy 
joined the third estate on that day. 

If the letter of the Venetian ambassador were not 
dated, it would be possible to date it very closely. 
The events described are those of June, 1789. The 
last event mentioned is "the union of the three or- 
ders in the hall of the states general," which took 
place on June 27. Hence the letter must have been 
written shortly after this, before anything else of im- 
portance had taken place. After the union of June 

[72] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

27, the assembly did not meet again until June 30. 
The inference would be that if Capello had written 
his letter after the thirtieth, he would have said 
something about this first meeting, a very important 
one. We should fix the date then as either June 28 
or 29. The date shows that the letter was written on 
the twenty-ninth. 

A letter by the Swedish ambassador at the French 
court, found in the same collection with the letters 
of Desmoulins and Capello, could, if not dated, 
have its date fixed definitely. "The majority of the 
clergy," runs the text, "went to the national assembly 
yesterday, and this morning forty-seven noblemen." 
It is well known that these things happened on June 
24 and 25 : the letter must have been written on 
June 25. 

Another illustration from the same collection is 
the letter of Biauzat, a member of the third estate 
in the national assembly of 1789. Writing to his con- 
stituents about the royal session he said, "One of 
the last expressions of the king was for us to meet 
tomorrow in separate chambers." The letter was 
written on June 23, the day of the royal session. 

The collection of the letters of Marie Antoinette 
by La Rocheterie and Beaucourt contains an ex- 
ample of an unsuccessful attempt to date an undated 
letter. The letter is addressed to the Comte de 
Mercy, the Austrian ambassador at the French 
court. The editors assign the letter to July, 1789. 
It was clearly written after October 6, 1789, as the 

[ 73 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

queen refers to the intention of the king to recall his 
bodyguards and the opposition of the people of 
Paris to this act. This reference would have no mean- 
ing until after the invasion of Versailles in October, 
1789, and the dissolution of the guard. 

The problem of determining the date of writing 
of a volume of recollections is solved in the same 
way as that of the date of a letter, but demands 
more time and does not always yield satisfactory re- 
sults. One may sometimes read through hundreds of 
pages without finding anything as a basis for the 
termini. As a rule, however, enough is found to make 
it possible to determine whether the record was made 
at once or some years later. Not infrequently a jour- 
nal, written at the time, may be changed before 
printing, or notes taken at the time of an event may 
be incorporated with little change in a narrative 
written several years later. One should be on one's 
guard and not attribute the whole work either to 
the earlier or the later period. Young's Travels in 
France is an example of the first kind of work; the 
Memoires of the Marquis de Bouille of the last. 

The Memoires of Bailly has the form of a diary 
and by some writers was supposed to have been writ- 
ten from day to day. The use of such expressions as 
"yesterday," "today," "this morning," etc., give sup- 
port to the idea, but other expressions, such as "at 
that time," "since," "that same day," "I do not re- 
member," and an opening sentence in which Bailly 
writes, referring to his experiences during the revo- 

[74] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

lution, "reduced to my memory to retrace them at 
this moment in my mind, and to commit them to this 
journal, I protest that my memory will be faithful," 
make clear that the work was written some years 
after the events it describes. 

When was the work written? It was begun after 
November 18, 1791, for in the opening pages of the 
first volume Bailly refers to the work as "the journal 
of my life for thirty-one months." From April, 1789, 
when he entered public life, to November 18, 1791, 
when he ceased to be mayor of Paris, was thirty-one 
months. 

He probably did not begin to write until January, 
1792, when he was settled at his country place near 
Nantes, for on page 358 of volume one, Bailly uses 
the expression, "today, February 23, 1792." All of 
the work from this point on was written after this 
date. The portion between pages 358 in volume one, 
and page 303 in volume two, was written before June 
14, 1792, as on the latter page we find the expres- 
sion, "up to the time at which I write (June 14, 
1792)." The Memoir es breaks off abruptly at page 
409 of this volume. The last hundred pages must 
have been written before the news of the insurrec- 
tion of June 20, 1792, had reached Nantes, for, 
after hearing this news, Bailly travelled through the 
departments. The writing, interrupted at this time, 
was never taken up again. The writing of the Me- 
moires was evidently begun in January, 1792, and 
ended in July of the same year. As the work treats 

[75] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

of the events happening between April and October, 
1789, it was written nearly three years after the 
events had taken place. What effect this has on the 
value of Bailly's recollections I shall consider later. 

The question, Where was the source written? — 
the third subproblem under localization — is closely 
related to the first two, although not, as a rule, as im- 
portant in the evaluation of the source as the per- 
sonality of the writer and the time of writing. When 
a record is not a source in the best sense, a record 
made by an eyewitness of what he has seen, but made 
by a contemporary who obtained his information 
second-hand, the place of writing becomes impor- 
tant. The question is, Was the writer in a position to 
obtain good second-hand evidence? Again, when the 
record is the account of an eyewitness, but not writ- 
ten at the time the event occurred, it is important 
to know whether, at the time of writing, he was at 
the place where the events took place and was able 
to refresh his memory from other sources. Some- 
times the place of writing can be inferred by refer- 
ences made by the writer; often it has to be learned 
from outside information and from inference. For 
example, Bailly wrote his Memoires in the spring of 
1792; we know that he was at his country house 
near Nantes at this time; hence the Memoires was 
written at that place. 

An excellent illustration of how the place of writ- 
ing may be inferred from the content of a source is 
given by Bernheim. In the early part of the nine- 

[76] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

teenth century, there were discovered in the monas- 
tery of Saint Michael in Liineburg, a few sheets of 
parchment manuscript containing annals for the 
years 1057 to 1130. Neither the name of the author 
nor the time and place of writing was given. The • 
part from 1 100 on was clearly the work of a contem- 
porary. Where was it written? The handwriting was 
of the twelfth century, but showed no local peculiari- 
ties. The same was true of the language, which was 
the Latin of the twelfth century. The place of dis- 
covery might point to lower Saxony as the region in 
which it was written, but not without further proof. 
An examination of the contents showed that the part 
from 1 100 on bore the stamp of unity; it was written 
by one person evidently. Who was this person? 

Saxon events are treated in great detail, while 
events taking place in the rest of Germany, even 
when important, are simply mentioned or not re- 
ferred to at all. Changes in the bishops of different 
bishoprics occupy much space, and the author is es- 
pecially interested in the bishoprics of Magdeburg, 
Bremen, Halberstadt and Merseburg, Saxon bishop- 
rics. Most of the princes whose deaths are men- 
tioned are Saxon, and the writer assumes that when 
he refers simply to "Markgraf Rudolf" or to "Graf 
Friedrich," the reader will understand him. The 
deaths in the family of the counts of Stade are given 
regularly and the writer assumes the reader is ac- 
quainted with these relatively unimportant lords. 
"Udo comes," "Count Udo," is the regular form of 

[77] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

reference. So great is the interest in this family that 
in the midst of the account of the struggle between 
Henry IV and his son, the annalist breaks off his nar- 
rative to note that "Count Linderus with the sur- 
name of Udo was taken sick, was brought to the 
monastery of Rosenfeld and died there." The men- 
tion of this monastery in connection with the Count 
of Stade is an important clue. Investigation shows 
that the monastery of Rosenfeld is located on the 
land of the Count of Stade, that it was founded by 
the counts of Stade. 

Who, then, would be as much interested in the 
counts of Stade as a monk in the monastery of Ros- 
enfeld, who wrote his annals for the circle of read- 
ers around him? And a notice from the year 1130 
points unmistakably to the monastery of Rosenfeld 
as the place where the annals were written. "Cono 
abbas obiit," "the Abbot Kuno died," runs the rec- 
ord. Only in the monastery in which the annals were 
written could a reference like that — a reference that 
did not give the name of the monastery over which 
Kuno presided — be understood. From other sources 
we learn that Kuno was the abbot at the head of the 
monastery until 1130. It was here, clearly, that the 
annals were written. 

The localization of the sources does not constitute 
the whole of criticism. The object of criticism is to 
discover the relation of the witness to the fact, to 
what really took place. We have assumed, up to 
this point, that the record contains nothing but what 

[78] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

the witness actually saw or heard. That is seldom 
true and before we go farther we must analyze the 
source to determine definitely how much of it is first- 
hand and how much second-hand material. That 
being settled, it remains to determine, if possible, 
where the second-hand material came from. Some- 
times the witness states himself that he saw or heard 
certain things, but not infrequently the knowledge 
that what he has recorded is first-hand material is a 
matter of inference. We know that he was present 
or was not present in a certain place at a certain 
time and that he could or could not have seen and 
heard these things. 

Camille Desmoulins, for example, tells what 
Mirabeau said to Breze in the hall of the estates on 
June 23. We know that the session was not open to 
the public on that day and that Desmoulins was not 
a deputy; hence he could not have heard the apos- 
trophe of Mirabeau to the master of ceremonies. 
We infer that he saw the king arrive from the way 
in which he refers to it and to the cries that were 
raised. 

When a deputy who was present in the hall tells 
what took place there, it is probably first-hand evi- 
dence, but when he tells us what took place outside 
while he was inside, we infer that the matter is 
second-hand. 

When Necker tells us in his memoir that the king 
was probably called out of a council meeting on 
June 19, 1789, by order of the queen, we infer it is 

[ 79 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

not first-hand evidence, but inference. He could not 
have seen the queen send the messenger, he did not 
hear what the messenger said and he did not see 
what took place after the king left the council cham- 
ber. 

With the knowledge of who the witness was, 
where he was at a given time, what he could have 
seen and what he could not have seen, as a touch- 
stone, we go through his narrative separating what 
he saw and heard from what he learned from others. 
The first part we can then evaluate on the basis of 
the character of the source, the personality of the 
writer and the time and place of writing. 

The evaluation of the source is the goal toward 
which all our criticism up to this point has been mov- 
ing. Is the source of such a character, has the witness 
such a personality, was the record made at such a 
time and in such a place that we can place a high de- 
gree of confidence in the affirmations found in the 
source? If the source is a private letter, written by 
an intelligent, well-informed and honest person, at 
the time and in the place where the event took place, 
we say it has the highest possible value. If the form 
is a public pamphlet, written by an individual of 
limited intelligence, low morality and little opportu- 
nity to inform himself, written long after the events 
and not in the place at which the events occurred, we 
place the lowest value upon it. Between these two 
lie all possible kinds of combinations, one or more 
of the elements possessing a low degree of value. 

[80] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

For example, the source might be a letter written by 
an able, well-informed and trustworthy person, but 
might treat of events which happened long before 
the date of writing; or the character of the source 
may be satisfactory and all the other elements — 
personality of the writer, time and place — unsatis- 
factory. 

The evaluation, under the most favorable condi- 
tions, does not possess mathematical accuracy. After 
studying the source, we reach the conclusion that the 
affirmations of the witness as a whole possess little, 
much, or great value. Yet this is not the last word. 
While the evidence as a whole may be very valuable, 
certain ' portions, single affirmations, may possess 
little or no value. Consequently each affirmation must 
be judged on its own merits, must be carefully scru- 
tinized, and no doubtful affirmations must be allowed 
to slip past us because the witness is trustworthy as 
a whole. On the other hand, in the testimony of a 
generally untrustworthy witness may be found some 
affirmations of the highest value that can not be re- 
jected on the ground that the evidence as a whole is 
untrustworthy. 

The close connection between the judgment passed 
upon the individual affirmation and the sum total of 
information derived from the previous criticism of 
a source should now be clear. We do not localize and 
analyze a source simply as a matter of form, and 
then forget what we have learned, but we are 
obliged to have the data at our fingers' ends and use 

[81] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

it consciously, as we would use our knowledge of the 
personality of a witness if we were cross-examining 
him in the courtroom. We have in mind, at the same 
time, all the various kinds of errors the witness may 
commit and how many and what errors a witness 
such as we have before us would be likely to commit. 
The possibilities of error, between the time when the 
witness fixes his eye on the event and the moment 
when he writes down what he thought he saw, are 
many. 

In the first place, to see or hear correctly what is 
going on, the witness must have normal senses. A 
man who is near-sighted, color-blind, hard of hear- 
ing or otherwise defective, might make a poor wit- 
ness. Furthermore, the witness must possess enough 
natural intelligence to interpret correctly the signals 
which the senses are constantly sending in to the 
brain. And this interpretation calls not only for good 
normal mental powers, at least, but educated mental 
powers as well. It has been well said that "the eye 
sees in an object what the eye brings power of see- 
ing." Other things being equal, an electrician will 
describe a new electrical machine more correctly than 
a common machinist; a theologian will reproduce 
the doctrinal arguments in a sermon more fully and 
exactly than a layman; a soldier will describe a battle 
better than a civilian. 

The mind does not, however, reproduce all the 
senses present to it; it is obliged to choose. Here 
again a trained mind is necessary. Unless the impor- 

[82] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

tant details are seized, the event cannot be correctly 
described. 

After the details have been noted they must be 
grouped, organized to form a connected whole, an 
observation. Perhaps this is the most difficult task 
and the one performed with the least success by the 
ordinary mind. 

The steps of sense impression, mental selection of 
details and grouping of details have been treated as 
if they took place in chronological order and formed 
a conscious operation. The truth is, of course, that 
all three operations are going on at the same time 
and for the most part unconsciously. In this respect, 
the material with which the historian works is much 
less valuable than the direct, conscious observations, 
many times repeated, of the natural scientist. 

The impression once received, it remains to com- 
mit it to writing. Here a new possibility of error 
arises. Assuming that the witness has a clear, correct 
and well-organized observation in his mind, the 
problem is to express it so exactly in language as to 
convey to the mind of another ideas similar to those 
existing in his own. How few witnesses can do that ! 
How few write consciously, how few are able to use 
words with the nicety imperatively necessary if a 
correct image and fine distinctions are to be con- 
veyed from one mind to another! Not infrequently 
the reader is obliged to correct the account, help- 
ing the writer to say what he intended to say. 

All these possible errors must be kept in mind and 

[ 8 3 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

the investigator must be on the alert for the errors 
to which each witness seems liable. To make the 
measure full, it must not be forgotten that prejudice, 
dishonesty, personal interest and party passion are 
constantly at work distorting the impression received 
by the witness. Along with them works time, blotting 
from the mind details and outline until the cor- 
rect impression entirely disappears. There is no 
space here to illustrate the various ways in which 
these influences work in lessening the value of testi- 
mony. One class of sources, however, must be espe- 
cially mentioned, the memoirs. 

Historians of the last generation made large use 
of memoirs and the uncritical use of them is still 
common. Of all kinds of written tradition in which 
the witness is honestly endeavoring to tell the truth, 
probably no kind is less trustworthy than this. The 
cause of the untrustworthiness is to be found in for- 
getfulness due to the length of time that has elapsed 
between the observation of the event and the writing 
down of the record. 

The material found in memoirs falls into two 
principal classes : ( i ) Affirmations touching matters 
of fact and (2) opinions and judgments of the wit- 
ness upon what he has experienced. The one is of no 
more value than the other. As a rule, such affirma- 
tions in memoirs as we are able to check up by 
other evidence prove so untrustworthy that we hesi- 
tate to make use of those we cannot control. The 
writer himself, if an educated man, realizes that his 

[84] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

memory is untrustworthy and attempts to supple- 
ment it by utilizing other source material, such as 
documents, letters, newspapers, etc., in which the 
event was recorded at the time it took place. This 
material is sometimes incorporated bodily into the 
text, sometimes reproduced in substance. What value 
is added to the affirmation of witness in a letter writ- 
ten in 1789, if we find it reproduced in the same lan- 
guage — evidently copied from the letter — in mem- 
oirs written by the same witness in 1804? Not the 
same value certainly as if the fact were recalled in- 
dependently of the letter. But even in that case — the 
repetition of the same statement in substantially the 
same form by the same witness — could we be sure 
that the witness was telling the truth? A witness 
could certainly recall a false impression, without 
knowing that it was false. 

When the writer of memoirs does not make use 
of other sources to refresh his memory and supply 
his narrative with details, the narrative is generally 
superficial, lacking in detail and objectivity. The 
reason Bailly's Memoires is so full of detail is that 
he trusted very little to his memory, building up his 
narrative from the minutes of the assembly and of 
the city government of Paris, from letters, newspa- 
pers and documents, much as the modern historian 
would do. I have examined the two volumes of his 
Memoires, comparing the text with the text of the 
sources he used, and was able to find the sources for 
nine-tenths of what the Memoires contained; the 

[85] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

amount of pure recollection is very small. In estab- 
lishing the facts of the French revolution, the scien- 
tific historian should never think of quoting the text 
of Bailly when the text is only the literal reproduc- 
tion of the Point du jour, the Courrier de Provence 
or the Proces-verbal of the assembly; he should go 
directly to these sources. 

But Bailly describes the events in which he took a 
prominent part, and when he reproduces the account 
given in a source written at that time, is not that 
equivalent to saying, "This is the way I remember 
it"? If so, how much nearer certainty does the repe- 
tition of the first source bring us? The problem is, 
perhaps, unanswerable. Sometimes the statement re- 
produced may be correct and at other times incor- 
rect. If we have only the single original source and 
the reproduction, how can we tell whether the origi- 
nal is correct or not, and if we do not know that, how 
can we tell whether the repetition is correct or not? 
In a word, when we can check up the source written 
at the time by another independent source written 
at the time, we are not helped by the repetition of 
the first source in memoirs written several years 
later. 

The opinions and judgments of a witness found in 
his memoirs, purporting to be what he felt and 
thought at the time of the events, are no more valu- 
able than his affirmations touching the events them- 
selves, for they are equally subject to lapses of mem- 
ory. Opinions and judgments of a witness concerning 

[86] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

what he has seen or heard are valuable if they were 
recorded at the time the events took place. Contem- 
porary letters and diaries are full of such matter, 
and very valuable matter it is, but it has little in com- 
mon with a record of these same impressions as seen 
through the haze of years. 

The Memoires of Madame Roland, written on 
the eve of her execution and containing a sketch of 
her early life, conveys a quite different conception of 
her early sentiments and ideals from that obtained 
from letters written during her girlhood; in her 
Memoires, she had read into her earlier life the sen- 
timents and ideals of her later life. 

The opinions and judgments expressed in mem- 
oirs have value, to be sure, if we wish to know the 
point of view of the writer at the time the memoirs 
were written, but as a rule such matter is of less in- 
terest than the opinions of the witness, recorded on 
the spot, concerning great events in which he may 
have participated. The final word concerning mem- 
oirs as evidence would seem to be that they should 
be used when no better sources can be found, but 
used with an understanding that a synthesis based 
upon them is of very uncertain value. 



[8 7 ] 



V 

CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES: 
INDEPENDENCE 

Up to this point, we have had under consideration 
only the first-hand material contained in a source. 
What shall be done with the second-hand material 
we have encountered? It is necessary to know from 
what source this information is drawn, that, if pos- 
sible, we may use the record of the original witness 
instead of the second-hand reproduction. If the orig- 
inal cannot be found, the reproduction may be used, 
with certain reservations to be considered later in 
connection with the establishment of the fact. Here 
we wish to consider the problem of the dependence 
of the sources, of which the question of the origin 
of a second-hand account is only a part. 

It frequently happens, in reading and criticising 
the sources dealing with an event, that we are struck 
by the fact that the same incident is related in two 
or more sources with the same details, arranged in 
the same order and reported in the same or nearly 
the same language. Such resemblance does not indi- 
cate that the facts reported are true, but that the 
sources reporting it have borrowed from each other 

[88] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

or from a source to us unknown. The basis for the 
assumption is the psychological truth that no two 
independent witnesses can report the same detailed 
event, giving the same details, in the same order and 
in the same language. When such resemblance is 
noted, in reading the sources, we have a problem in 
dependence. How is it solved? 

The first question is, Is one of the sources the orig- 
inal and the other the borrower? We may have 
already sufficient information about the two sources 
to enable us to answer that question. If, for example, 
in comparing the Memoires of Bailly with the Pro- 
ces-verbal of the national assembly for the events of 
June 23, 1789, we find the two recording the vote 
of the assembly on the decrees in almost the same 
language, Bailly saying, "These two votes were 
taken in the presence of several members of the 
clergy. Those whose credentials had been veri- 
fied, gave their opinions at this time; the others 
asked that mention be made of their presence," and 
the Pro ces-verbal, "These votes were taken in the 
presence of several members of the clergy. Those 
whose credentials had been verified gave their vote 
at the same time with their opinions; the others 
asked that mention be made of their presence," it is 
clear there is dependence. The Proces-verbal was 
written at the time, Bailly's Memoires three years 
later; hence the Proces-verbal was probably copied 
by Bailly. The discovery of other passages common 
to both and even references in the Memoires to the 

[89] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

Proces-verbal by title furnish convincing proof that 
Bailly drew material from this source. 

A more difficult case of dependence is that of the 
Point du jour and the Proces-verbal for June 20, 
1789. A large amount of material is found in the 
same form in both and yet both were written and 
published at the time of the events. Both were the 
work of eyewitnesses, one being written by the sec- 
retary of the assembly, Camus, the other by Barere, 
a member of the assembly. Localization shows that 
the Proces-verbal was published on June 21, while 
the Point du jour did not appear until the next day. 
Barere evidently used the printed Proces-verbal of 
June 21 to prepare his paper, which appeared on 
June 22. One or two incidents, not reported in the 
Proces-verbal, are recorded in the Point du jour by 
Barere from his own direct observation. 

This same session of the assembly is also described 
in the Memoires of Bailly, where material is found 
common to the Proces-verbal and to the Point du 
jour. That Bailly used the Proces-verbal we already 
know; that he was also dependent upon the Point du 
jour is shown by the content and form of the two 
accounts and by a direct reference to the title, Point 
du jour, in the Memoires. Here are three sources 
in the exact sense of the term, records made by eye- 
witnesses of events they had seen, two of the records 
being printed within two days of the event, and yet 
the agreement of their affirmations does not give us 
certainty concerning the event recorded. Two of the 

[90] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

witnesses, instead of recording what they remem- 
bered, copied the account of a third. Thus, instead 
of three independent accounts, we have one account 
by an eyewitness copied by two other eyewitnesses. 

Much of the work of the older historians of the 
French revolution has been vitiated by the use of 
sources the relationship of which has not been de- 
termined. An examination of a group of these 
sources will make clear how dangerous such a prac- 
tice is. Two newspapers, the Moniteur and the Jour- 
nal des debuts, and a contemporary history, Histoire 
de la revolution francaise par deux amis de la liberte, 
constitute a group of sources much used by the his- 
torians of the last generation, as a rule, without any 
critical study. 

Let us first consider the relation of the Journal 
des debats to the Moniteur. If the topic selected for 
study is the abolition of the remnants of feudalism 
by the French national assembly on the famous night 
of August 4, 1789, we find material for this study 
both in the Journal and the Moniteur. It is true the 
material, or a large part of it, is literally the same in 
both papers, but a little matter of that kind did not 
trouble the uncritical historian. Here was the same 
fact stated twice in the same terms by two contem- 
porary newspapers ; that should be enough to prove 
it was true. For the critical historian it is just enough 
to render him suspicious. "Why are the two accounts 
almost literally the same?" he asks and thus sets the 
critical machinery in motion. 

[91] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

Here, evidently, are two related sources. What 
relationship exists between them? Is either a first- 
hand record, made at the time the event took place? 
It has already been stated, in connection with the 
forgery of the third volume of Bailly's Memoires, 
that the publication of the Moniteur did not begin 
until November 24, 1789, and the part dealing with 
the events from May to November 24, 1789, was 
not compiled until several years later. It could not, 
then, have been a source for the events of August 4, 
1789. Before asking where the material came from 
for the composition of .the earlier part, let us note 
an important fact in the history of the Journal des 
debats. Although the file of the Journal found in the 
libraries begins in June, 1789, a critical examination 
of the paper shows that the publication did not begin 
until the latter part of August, 1789, and the pre- 
ceding numbers were compiled in 1790. 

Neither the Moniteur nor the Journal des debats, 
then, was in existence at the time of the debates of 
August 4, 1789, and both accounts found in the files 
of these papers are later reconstructions, although 
the reconstructions of contemporaries. How was the 
reconstruction accomplished and what is the relation 
of the reconstruction in the Moniteur to the recon- 
struction in the Journal? 

It should be kept in mind that when the editors 
of the Moniteur prepared their back numbers for 
1789, the reconstruction of the Journal for June, 
July and August, 1789, was in existence and might 

[92] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

have been used. A comparison of the text of the 
Moniteur with that of the Journal shows that there 
are some passages in the Moniteur not found in the 
Journal. This suggests the possibility that the editors 
of the Moniteur, instead of copying the Journal, 
used the same sources that had been used by the edi- 
tors of the Journal. How can that point be settled? 
By finding the sources used in the construction of the 
back numbers of the Journal. 

That seems like hunting for a needle in a hay- 
stack, but it is not so difficult as it seems. Suppose — 
we ask ourselves — we had been among the editors 
of the Journal in 1790, and had been required to 
construct an account of the debate of the night of 
August 4, 1789, what source material could we have 
found and what would we naturally have used? It 
is highly probable that we would have used printed 
material. The printed material, then accessible, con- 
sisted of the Proces-verbal, or minutes of the assem- 
bly, and newspapers, among which the most promi- 
nent were the Point du jour and the Assemblee 
nationale. A comparison of the text of the Journal 
with the text of these three sources shows that, with 
the exception of one short extract, the whole account 
of the Journal can be found in their pages. In fact, 
it is almost wholly a compilation from the Proces 
and the Point du jour. Much of it was reproduced 
literally, some of it slightly modified in form, some 
changes of expression being necessary to make the 

[ 93 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

extracts read continuously and to give to them the 
appearance of unity. 

There is nothing technical or difficult about this 
comparison of texts. The volumes are placed side by 
side on the table, where the eye can readily pass 
from one to the other. We read the first incident of 
the session recorded in the Journal; the same in- 
cident is related in the Proces-verbal in the same 
language; the next incident is taken literally from 
the Point du jour with a slight change; the third 
from the Proces, with no change; the fourth comes 
literally from the Point du jour, while the account of 
the rest of the session, with the exception of six in- 
cidents, is composed of material from the Point du 
jour and the Proces-verbal, for the most part repro- 
duced literally. 

Of what value is the account in the Journal des 
debats for the study of the night of August 4? None 
whatever, apart from a scrap of source material 
found in its columns and not found in the sources 
with which we have compared it. This scrap itself 
must have come from some other source, probably 
from some other newspaper. Making a note of that 
single paragraph for future use, we discard the rest 
of the account. 

Passing to the second problem, let us see what the 
relation of the Moniteur is to the Journal des debats 
and the sources used in its compilation. The account 
of the debates of the night of August 4, contained in 
the Journal, composed of the material in the Proces- 

[94] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

verbal and the Point dn jour, was the most complete 
account accessible to the editors of the back numbers 
of the Moniteur when they began their work. They 
probably did not know the history of the Journal 
and made no distinction between the reconstructed 
part and the genuine newspaper. The account in the 
Journal is in the third person, and no attempt is 
made to give to it the appearance of a parliamentary 
record. The Moniteur had been printing its accounts 
in this latter form and in making use of the text of 
the Journal it changed it to make it appear like a 
stenographic record, the name of each speaker being 
followed by his speech in the first person. A compari- 
son of this text with the text of the Journal shows 
that the editors arbitrarily changed the person from 
third to first and made other changes in the text of 
the Journal to give the speech the appearance of an 
exact quotation. This makes the text of the Moniteur 
less valuable as a copy than that of the Journal. 

In addition to the Journal, from which the great 
bulk of the material was drawn, the editors of the 
Moniteur made some use of two other newspapers, 
the Courrier de Provence and the Assemblee natio- 
nale, taking from them notices of incidents not men- 
tioned in the Journal. But how do we know that the 
Moniteur took the most of its material from the 
Journal and not directly from the sources used by 
the Journal? Because ( i ) the same modifications in 
the text of the original sources made by the editors 
of the Journal also appear in the text of the Moni- 

[95] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

teur and (2) the same extracts arranged in the same 
order are found in both. No two persons, working 
independently, would make the same selections from 
two newspapers, arrange them in the same way 
and make the same changes in the language of the 
original; hence the material in the Moniteur was 
drawn from the Journal. 

The material in the Moniteur, literally the same, 
or very nearly the same, as that in the Assemblee 
nationale or the Courrier de Provence, was evidently 
taken directly from these papers. 

The Moniteur, then, is a compilation of three 
newspapers, and the newspapers of which the prin- 
cipal use is made is nothing but a compilation itself. 
The Moniteur is less valuable than the Journal as a 
copy and neither has any value as a source. 

The third source to which reference has been 
made, the Histoire de la revolution par deux amis 
de la liberte, is related to the Moniteur, having been 
used by the editors of the Moniteur in its recon- 
structed numbers, but not for the account of the ses- 
sion of August 4, as Ranke erroneously believed. 
The first two volumes of the work were in print in 
July, 1790. Much has been written about the author- 
ship of these volumes. It is commonly asserted, with- 
out any proof, that they were written by Kerverseau 
and Clavelin, but the authorship is of little impor- 
tance, as the work is only a compilation. The ac- 
count of the session of August 4 is woven together 
from fragments of the Proces-verbal and the Cour- 

[96] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

rier de Provence, the bulk of it being taken literally 
from the Proces-verbal, without quotation marks. 
This dependence is established ( i ) by reading the 
texts and noting that they are the same, (2) by 
showing that as the Histoire was not composed until 
after the Proces-verbal and the Courrier de Pro- 
vence had been printed it must be dependent upon 
them. 

What is true of August 4, is also true of other 
portions of the Histoire for 1789 that I have had 
occasion to examine; they are pieced together from 
sources still in existence. Flammermont, in his mono- 
graph on "July 14, 1789," says of the Histoire as a 
source for that period: "They make use especially 
of the Proces-verbal des electeurs, of the Bastille 
devoilee, and of the Precis exact dn Cousin Jacques. 
. . . But they have no definite system; they have 
not made a critical study of any of the sources they 
have employed; they have confined themselves to 
choosing, upon any point, the version which ap- 
peared the most trustworthy to them; they have 
fallen into some of the strangest contradictions. 
. . . In short, the work has no original value." It 
has been used by historians for the uprising of Octo- 
ber 5 and 6, 1789, and yet the editors state them- 
selves that they made use of the depositions taken in 
1789 and 1790 by the Chatelet, the criminal court 
of Paris, and accessible today in the published Pro- 
cedure criminelle . 

Dependence is often a very subtile thing. A good 

[97] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

illustration of this is found in connection with the 
events of June 22, 1789. On that day, it is said, — and 
this tradition is repeated in many of the histories of 
the revolution, — the national assembly did not meet 
in the tennis court, as it had done on June 20, be- 
cause the Comte d'Artois had notified the owner of 
the court that he wished to play tennis that day, the 
real motive for his action being to prevent the meet- 
ing of the assembly. This story is found in the works 
of Thibaudeau and Dubois-Crance, both members of 
the third estate and present in Versailles on that day. 
Neither man could have seen the narrative of the 
other, as both were published after the death of the 
writers. Here is apparent independence and seem- 
ingly the evidence should be sufficient to establish the 
fact. 

But let us examine the problem a little closer. 
What was the date of writing of the two works? 
Thibaudeau's volume was written in 1804, Dubois- 
Crance's in 1799, that is many years after the event. 
This made it possible for the two writers to hear and 
report the same tradition, which had become current 
and well fixed at the time when they wrote. Further- 
more, they had no first-hand knowledge of the pre- 
tended message of the Comte d'Artois to the owner 
of the tennis court and it is doubtful if they could 
have had any other authority than hearsay for what 
they reported. Finally, there is an abundance of first- 
hand evidence to show that the tennis court was not 
reserved on that day for the Comte d'Artois, that a 

[98] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

large number of people gained entrance to it and 
among them some of the members of the assembly. 
The meeting was not held there ( i ) because of the 
crowd, (2) because there were no seats or furniture 
of any kind, and (3) because a dignified meeting 
place was desired for that day, as the majority of 
the clergy was planning to join the assembly. 

This example illustrates the way in which the dif- 
ferent steps of the historical method are related to 
each other. To prove the dependence of our two 
sources on rumor, it was necessary to emphasize the 
fact that the writers had no first-hand knowledge of 
what they reported; that is, we made use of the dis- 
tinction already mentioned between what the writer 
knew directly and what he knew only by hearsay. It 
then remained for us to show that this tradition con- 
flicted with facts established by reliable, independent 
witnesses. 

Another illustration of the agreement of contem- 
poraries concerning a tradition about which they had 
no first-hand knowledge, is the statement that the 
heads of the two bodyguards assassinated at Ver- 
sailles on the morning of October 6 were carried to 
Paris on pikes and were under the eyes of the king 
and queen during the long and frightful journey of 
that October afternoon. The tradition was formed 
early. A member of the assembly, Duquesnoy, writ- 
ing to his constituents on October 7, exclaimed, 
u Think of that carriage, preceded by the heads of 
the bodyguards!" The anecdote has made its way 

[99] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

into almost all the histories, and yet it is not true. 
The fact is established beyond the possibility of a 
doubt that the heads were in Paris before the royal 
carriage had left Versailles. Contemporaries who re- 
ported were dependent on rumor, although seem- 
ingly independent. 

Enough has been said, I think, to make clear the 
difficulty of establishing the independence of wit- 
nesses and also the necessity of doing so. Only on a 
foundation of facts established by the agreement of 
trustworthy, independent witnesses can a permanent, 
scientific exposition of man's historic past be con- 
structed. To laboriously collect all the sources and 
submit each one to the tests that have been described 
for genuineness, authorship, time and place of writ- 
ing, and finally to compare them with each other in 
order to determine whether or not they are inde- 
pendent is a task that consumes a vast amount of 
time and demands an equal amount of patient en- 
deavor. In no other way, however, can history be 
scientifically written. The refusal to recognize this 
patent fact and, at the same time, to fail to distin- 
guish between popular and scientific historical ex- 
positions, has made the work of the scientific histo- 
rian needlessly laborious. When an historian has 
carefully studied the sources of the period upon 
which he is engaged, the practice has been to treat 
the results of his critical studies as so much waste 
product after they have aided him in the construction 
of a scientific narrative. It is an indefensible practice. 

[ ioo] 



CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

The same sources used for the construction of a 
study on one topic may be used later for the prepara- 
tion of another topic taken from the same period. 
Why should the later investigator be obliged to re- 
peat all the critical work accomplished by his prede- 
cessor and why should this work still remain unfor- 
mulated and the labor of Sisyphus go on forever? If 
each one formulated and printed the results of his 
preliminary critical work, in determining, for exam- 
ple the authorship of the journal attributed to Du- 
quesnoy, the genuineness of the third volume of 
Bailly's Memoires, or the Journal of a Spy, the time 
when Bailly wrote his Memoires, or the dependence 
of the Moniteur upon the Journal des debats and of 
both upon the Proces-verbal and the newspapers of 
the period, how much easier it would make the work 
of the historian of the early French revolution, and 
how much bad historical work would be prevented. 

All investigators have not the patience to do the 
critical work themselves, but they are willing to 
profit by it when they find it ready to their hands. 
This by-product of the historian's labors should be 
preserved in an appendix, in footnotes, or published 
apart in an historical review. It matters little where 
and when it is made public, if it is only preserved. 

The student of modern European history suffers 
more from the failure to publish critical studies than 
the worker in the ancient and mediaeval periods. 
There exists a false notion among historians of mod- 
ern history to the effect that this preliminary critical 

[ i.oi ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

work is something peculiar to the older fields of his- 
tory; that work in modern history is immune from 
it, that it is unnecessary there. It has even been as- 
serted that ancient and mediaeval history offer better 
opportunities than modern history for training in 
critical study. The correct statement of the case 
would be that more critical study has been done in 
ancient and mediaeval history, that in those periods 
it is regarded as indispensable and a student special- 
izing in mediaeval history under well-trained instruc- 
tors is more likely to be critically trained than one 
specializing in modern history. 

No historian ever published more varied critical 
work of a high quality than Leopold von Ranke, the 
great German historian of the last century and prob- 
ably the greatest of all historians. The productive 
period of his life was of extraordinary length, his 
first work being published when he was twenty-nine 
years of age, his last sixty years later. His first vol- 
ume contained a critical supplement in which he criti- 
cised the printed sources upon which the history of 
the period had hitherto been based. This practice 
was continued through all his later works even into 
his JVeltgeschichte, written in the last six years of 
his life. In these Analekten, as he called them, can be 
found classical examples of the solution of most of 
the problems with which the historian has to deal. 
The young historian could find no better means of 
supplementing his theoretical study of method than 
by working over carefully these Analekten of Ranke. 

[ 102 ] 



VI 
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FACTS 

The aim of criticism is the evaluation of the 
sources and the determination of their relationship, 
but evaluation is not an end in itself; it is the indis- 
pensable preliminary to the establishment of the 
facts. The criticism of the sources does not give us 
the facts; it puts us in a position to compare critically 
the affirmations of the independent witnesses by 
means of which the facts are established. This dis- 
tinction between an affirmation and a fact is of fun- 
damental importance and should never be lost sight 
of. What one witness affirms that he saw or heard 
may or may not be the truth; if it is confirmed by 
the independent affirmation of another witness, we 
say it is a fact, or that it is certain that the thing is 
true. As a rule, then, the condition of certainty is the 
existence of at least two independent witnesses to the 
same detailed fact. If their affirmations agree, then 
the thing affirmed is a fact, unless the witnesses are 
self-deceived. 

What is meant by this term self-deception? It is 
a psychic condition common to two or more witnesses 
which prevents them from interpreting correctly 
what they see or hear. For example, certain miracles 

[ 103 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

of the Middle Ages are established by the agreement 
of the affirmations of two or more independent wit- 
nesses. Does this prove that the thing took place as 
the witness described it? 

An illustration will make the point clear. Some 
years ago, I stood with a group of people in the mid- 
way of an exposition watching the manipulations of 
a sleight-of-hand performer. It was afternoon. The 
man stood upon a low platform, his flowing sleeves 
thrown back upon his arms, every condition seem- 
ingly unfavorable to the successful practice of visual 
deception. He held a tack between the thumb and 
forefinger of one hand and announced that he would 
insert it into the outer corner of his left eye. I 
watched him closely. He displayed the tack in his 
hand, raised the hand to the corner of his eye, seem- 
ingly pushed the tack in and then displayed the 
empty hand. The hand was again raised to the eye 
and the performer went through the process of push- 
ing the tack across his forehead. Taking it out of the 
outer corner of the right eye, he displayed it to the 
crowd. He appeared to have accomplished what he 
had promised to do; his hands had worked so 
rapidly that the eye of the observer had not been 
able to detect the imposition. 

Had this crowd been a gathering of mediaeval 
folk it would have reported a miracle and proved it 
by the agreement of a number of honest, independ- 
ent witnesses. But no one in that gathering, it is safe 
to assume, believed that the tack had passed under 

[ 104] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

the skin across the man's forehead, because they all 
knew enough about physiology to understand that 
the thing was impossible. They were not self-de- 
ceived ; they knew that the eye was not able to report 
all that had taken place. The agreement of the two 
or more independent witnesses did not, then, es- 
tablish the truth of the thing affirmed by the wit- 
nesses. 

It must be remembered that the foundation of the 
whole process of historical proof is possibility. If a 
thing is not possible, we cannot adduce sufficient his- 
torical proof to show that it was probable or certain. 
And what do we mean by a possibility? "A thing or 
event that may happen." To say that a thing is pos- 
sible is in no way to assert that it did happen, that 
we have any proof that it happened, but simply to 
assert that there is nothing in the sum total of re- 
liable human experience that would lead us to doubt 
the occurrence of such an event, if sufficient trust- 
worthy evidence existed to prove that it actually did 
take place. If contemporary witnesses testified that 
they saw a certain old woman, supported only by a 
broomstick, flying over a chimney, we would dismiss 
the evidence summarily because we know that a 
broomstick is not a flying machine, and is incapable 
of supporting in the air and transporting through the 
air a body heavier than air. The thing is impossible. 
The whole body of reliable human experience is 
against the possibility of the thing affirmed. 

It is affirmed in an historical document that on a 

[105] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

certain occasion water was changed into wine. The 
affirmation cannot be localized, that is, we do not 
know who saw this performance nor when he made 
a record of what he thought he saw, but even if the 
affirmation were of a more valuable nature, even 
if it could be definitely localized, it would not estab- 
lish the probability of the thing asserted, because all 
reliable human experience indicates that the thing 
could not have taken place. We know what the chem- 
ical composition of wine is and what the chemical » 
composition of water is and we know of no way 
in which the elements of water — oxygen and hydro- 
gen — can be combined to produce wine, i.e., fer- 
mented grape juice. If the witness believed that he 
saw water changed into wine, he was self-deceived. 

It should not be forgotten, however, that what 
was regarded as an impossibility in one age may be- 
come a possibility in another. At the same time it 
should be remembered that the occurrence is shifted 
from the realm of impossibilities to that of possibili- 
ties only because fresh and more reliable human ex- 
perience, exact and repeated experience, has shown 
that the thing may take place. 

One hundred years ago, if an individual had re- 
ported that he had seen a man flying in a machine 
heavier than air or that a message had been sent to 
Europe from America without the aid of wires, his 
testimony would have been dismissed without con- 
sideration on the ground of impossibility. Today 
these things have entered the realm of possibilities. 

[1.06] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

The fact that fresh human experience is constantly 
bringing what was regarded as impossible into the 
realm of the possible is of no assistance in dealing 
with affirmations touching the objects and events 
against the possibility of which all reliable human 
experience up to the present time has been arrayed. 
There may be possibilities among them, but only 
fresh scientific experiment can reveal them and until 
that comes these objects and events must be treated 
as impossible. 

It should be noted that this fresh scientific experi- 
ment is contrasted with historical testimony, evidence 
dealing with a single occurrence. It is true that the 
first successful experiment is historical, a single event, 
but it must be repeated, it must become natural 
science, it must be rendered rationally intelligible 
before it can outweigh the accumulated past experi- 
ence which asserted the thing to be impossible. Even 
the repeated experiments of a single scientist, which 
apparently change some scientific law, rendering 
possible what was before looked upon as impossible, 
are not regarded as valid until they have been re- 
peatedly and carefully performed by other scientists 
and there is general agreement as to the results of 
the work. 

On the other hand, we may not reason from possi- 
bility to probability. If a thing-is not possible, it can- 
not be probable, but because it is possible it in no 
wise follows that it is probable. In the discussion of 
the probability of an event, it is not at all uncommon 

[ 107 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

to hear the person whose statement is questioned 
exclaim, "But, is it not possible?" To his mind, pos- 
sibility carried probability along with it. 

To assert that a thing is possible is simply to af- 
firm that, as far as human experience goes, there is 
nothing to indicate that the thing may not have taken 
place, but that is to say nothing as to whether the 
thing actually did take place at a certain time and 
in a certain way. Evidence must be adduced to estab- 
lish probability, or certainty, after possibility has 
been recognized. Whether the evidence gives us a 
low or high degree of probability or whether it gives 
us certainty touching the occurrence, depends on the 
quantity and quality of the evidence. An event may 
be possible, but a single untrustworthy affirmation 
that it actually did occur may not move it from the 
background of possibility into the foreground of 
probability. A valuable single affirmation by an eye- 
witness may render the event highly probable, and 
the agreement of the affirmations of two independent 
witnesses may banish all doubt as to the truth of the 
matter. 

These are the general conditions under which the 
historian works when he undertakes to establish the 
facts relating to some past event. What is the actual 
process he makes use of? Let it be noted, in the first 
place, that the truth of the complex whole he is seek- 
ing to restore is ascertained by determining the truth 
of the elements which are to constitute it. He must 
get his pieces of stained glass before he can put them 

[108] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

together and form a rpse window. He has acquired 
a conception of his whole subject by reading his 
sources for the purpose of criticising them. Time 
may be saved, when the process is understood, by in- 
terpreting the different sources at the very begin- 
ning of the work, even before the criticism has been 
undertaken. 

Interpretation, in untechnical language, means 
reading over a source and making careful, detailed 
notes of the affirmations contained in the source re- 
lating to the subject under investigation. For this 
purpose a loose-leaved notebook may be used, the 
leaves having perpendicular red lines a short distance 
from the margins on the right and left sides of the 
sheet. The title of the source, with exact reference 
to edition, place and date of publication, the number 
of the volume from which the extracts are taken and 
the pages should be written at the top of the sheet. 
Between the red lines should be written the affirma- 
tions of the source; at the left, beyond the red line, 
should be given the page from which the affirmation 
was taken and at the right, beyond the red line, 
should be a side-head, to enable the student in run- 
ning over the pages to note readily what they 
contain. 

The card system of note taking — the cards being 
arranged in a box, each card with a heading and 
bearing a single affirmation — -has some manifest ad- 
vantages over the loose-leaved notebook. It is easier 
to run over the heads and see what one has, to at 

[ 109 J 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

once put a fresh affirmation in the group with the 
older affirmations on the same point. The objection 
to the box of cards for the undergraduate is the in- 
convenience in handling it; the notebook is easier to 
carry about. For the advanced student, or the gradu- 
ate who has a fixed place in a seminar room, this 
objection is not valid. 

The notes taken by the historian in the interpre- 
tation of a source are of two kinds : general and de- 
tailed. For the first, a statement in his own language 
concerning the substance of the text may be sufficient. 
He wishes to know the date of a certain event. As 
he reads his sources, he looks for a statement touch- 
ing this matter, and when he finds it, he is not con- 
cerned with the language of the text, but with the 
statement of the witness that the event happened on 
a certain day. But suppose the matter under investi- 
gation was the expression used by an historical char- 
acter on a certain occasion. Then the language and 
the details become important and the historian 
should carefully copy the statement of each source 
in its original language. 

It may be well to repeat here what has already 
been said about taking full and detailed notes upon 
sources that may not be accessible to the investigator 
when he begins his work of construction. These notes 
should not be translations and they should not be 
abridged. Whether the notes taken are general and 
condensed, or detailed and in the language of the 
text, will depend upon what the investigator is after 

[no] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

and must be determined by him. The notes should be 
made carefully, condensations exactly representing 
the ideas in the source, reproductions of the text 
being literal and complete. Slovenly work here will 
render good work in the next stage impossible. 

It should be realized at the outset that, in reading 
sources for scientific historical purposes, one must 
read more carefully than when engaged in gathering 
general information upon an historical period by the 
rapid reading of secondary works. Accuracy is the 
first requisite in scentific work and only such speed is 
permissible as is compatible with accuracy. The chief 
desideratum in scientific work is to get the thing done 
correctly. If it can be done correctly and at the same 
time rapidly, so much the better, but it must be done 
correctly even if it must be done slowly. 

The sources having been interpreted and notes 
taken of the affirmations relating to the subject in 
hand, the next step is to determine one detail after 
another by bringing together and comparing all the 
affirmations relating to each detail. A practical way 
of doing this is to write at the top of a sheet the fact 
to be established and to copy under it all the affirma- 
tions relating to it, the affirmations being spaced, so 
that one can see at a glance how many there are, the 
work from which they are drawn being shown by 
bibliographical references at the left of the red line 
on the left-hand side of the sheet. In handling these 
affirmations, three kinds of problems arise: (i) We 
may have several independent affirmations and they 

Cm] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

may agree concerning the fact, thus giving us cer- 
tainty; (2) there may be several independent affir- 
mations and they may disagree, the result being 
either probability or suspended judgment, and (3) 
we may have only one affirmation. 

The treatment of the first case is not difficult, if 
the critical work has been carefully done, that is, if 
we know that the affirmations came from first-hand, 
independent witnesses. Let us take as an example of 
the first problem an incident from the famous "Oath 
of the Tennis Court," of June 20, 1789. On the 
morning of that day, when the deputies reached their 
hall, they found it closed and guarded by troops, at 
least that is the statement of the secondary histo- 
rians. This statement is made up of a number of de- 
tails: (1) In the morning (2) of June 20, 1789, 
(3) the deputies of the third estate (4) went to their 
hall and (5) found it closed and (6) guarded by 
troops. Each of these details, if true, can be estab- 
lished by the agreement of the affirmations of inde- 
pendent witnesses. 

On the last detail we have the affirmations of 
three independent witnesses, namely, ( 1 ) the min- 
utes of the assembly, — Proces-verbal, — written by 
the secretary Camus, "The President and the two 
secretaries presented themselves at the principal en- 
trance; they found it guarded by soldiers"; (2) the 
account in a daily paper, — U assemble e nationale, — 
"Having arrived at the gate of the Menus (the 
hall), what a novel spectacle! The deputies found 

[112] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

there French guards, officers of the guards, who 
with fixed bayonets and drawn swords would have 
plunged like vile assassins the sword of despotism 
into the breast of the citizen"; (3) a letter of Du- 
quesnoy, a member of the third estate, "Yesterday, 
at the moment when the president presented him- 
self at the assembly hall, he found it guarded by 
soldiers who refused him entrance." These affirma- 
tions are all by eyewitnesses, recorded at the time of 
the event and entirely independent of each other. 
They agree that the hall was guarded by troops. We 
are justified in stating this as a fact, without any res- 
ervation. 

Notice that there are in the extracts other details 
not mentioned by all the witnesses. For instance, only 
one states that the troops were French Guards, only 
one gives the name of the hall, only one speaks of 
the presence of the secretaries, and only one refers 
to "fixed bayonets and drawn swords." All of these 
details would come under the third problem, where 
our knowledge rests upon the affirmation of a single 
witness and we get only probability. 

As the statement that the president was attended 
by two secretaries was made by one of them, Camus, 
and recorded that day, shortly after the officers 
reached the hall, the probability that the affirmation 
corresponds to the fact is very high, as it is not a 
matter concerning which Camus could have been 
readily deceived or could have forgotten in so short 
a time. 

[113] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



The case for the French Guards is not so good. 
This statement is found in the newspaper written by 
Lehodey, a newspaper writer, but not a member of 
the assembly. He spent his time in Versailles, where 
the assembly was sitting, gathering news for his pa- 
per. He would have had opportunities enough to 
learn who the French Guards were, and as he was in 
the avenue before the hall on the morning of June 
20, he would have had every opportunity to see the 
troops and recognize them as French Guards, 
although his affirmation to the effect that they were 
French Guards would not have the value of the affir- 
mation of Camus, one of the secretaries, that the 
president was accompanied by the secretaries on the 
morning of June 20. Furthermore, Lehodey did not 
write his account of the events of the day until the 
day was over and had more opportunity to forget 
than Camus. 

Let us turn now to the second and more difficult 
problem, where we have several independent affirma- 
tions, but they do not agree. I shall take as an illus- 
tration of this problem an example from the events 
of July 17, 1789. On that day, after the fall of the 
Bastille and the triumph of the revolution, Louis XVI 
visited Paris. As he was about to enter the city hall, 
Bailly, acting as mayor, presented him with a cock- 
ade, or rosette of ribbons. The historians say it was 
a tricolored cockade of red, blue and white. Is this 
true? The question is of no great importance, but 
every fact important enough to form a part of an 

[114] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

historical narrative is important enough to be stated 
correctly. 

I have found one source in which it is affirmed 
that the cockade was tricolored. Duquesnoy, writ- 
ing on the evening of July 17, said, "It is known 
that all the people of Paris wear a red, blue and 
white cockade . . . the king received one of them." 
Duquesnoy was with the king on that day, "almost 
always close to his carriage," so that he had every 
opportunity to see what was going on. This affirma- 
tion would seem to have as much value concerning 
the cockade as the affirmation of Lehodey would 
have touching the French Guards. If we had no 
other evidence, we should think it highly probable 
that the cockade worn by the king on July 17 was 
red, blue and white. 

But let us look at the rest of the evidence. The 
Proces-verbal of the city government of Paris con- 
tains a decree passed on July 13, 1789, ordering all 
citizens enrolled in the militia "to wear a red and 
blue cockade." These were the colors of the city. 

Gouverneur Morris, who sat in a window of the 
Rue St. Honore and saw the king pass on July 17, 
wrote in his diary that day, "The king's Horse 
Guards, some of the Guards du Corps and all those 
who attend him, have the cockades of the city, viz. 
red and blue." 

The Bailli de Virieu, the ambassador of Parma, 
who was in Paris at the time, wrote on July 20, "His 
Majesty came out of the city hall with a satisfied 

[115] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

look and as soon as he appeared in the square with 
the red and blue cockade in his hat cries of 'Long 
live the king' were heard." 

The Venetian ambassador, writing on July 20, re- 
fers to the cockade of the militia as "blue and red, 
the colors of the city," and in the same letters re- 
marks that "it is proper for everybody without dis- 
tinction to wear the cockade of the third estate which 
w T as changed from green to red, because the color 
green is that of the livery of the Comte d'Artois who 
has become the object of public hatred." 

The Proces-verbal of the city government for 
July 17 says, "The king dismounted from his car- 
riage at the entrance to the city hall and there M. 
Bailly presented to his majesty a cockade of the 
colors of the city" (that is, blue and red). This last 
affirmation would appear to be of great value, but 
unfortunately the Proces-verbal of July 17 was not 
written on July 17, as no minutes were kept at the 
time. The record as we have it was composed in the 
winter of 1 789-1 790 by a committee of the members 
of the city government who made use of notes taken 
at the time, of documents, and of statements made 
by members of the government, and their account 
when written was discussed by the city council and 
corrected. Whatever was left in the report repre- 
sented what these men, all of them witnesses of the 
events of July 17, believed had happened. It was 
their opinion that the color of the cockade worn on 

[n6] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

that day by the king was blue and red, the colors of 
the city. 

Camille Desmoulins, writing to his father on July 

1 6 and referring to the visit of the delegation of 
the national assembly to Paris on July 15, spoke of 
" 1 00,000 armed men and 800,000 with blue and red 
cockades." 

On that day, evidently, all Paris was wearing the 
blue and red cockade. More evidence might be added 
to show that the cockade worn by Louis XVI on July 

17 was not blue, red and white, but blue and red, 
the colors of the city of Paris. On the one side, we 
have the affirmation of Duquesnoy; on the other 
Morris, the Bailli de Virieu, the Proces-verbal and 
Camille Desmoulins, testifying either directly that 
the king wore a cockade of the city colors or that he 
wore the cockade everybody was wearing. The con- 
clusion is that Duquesnoy was mistaken and that the 
king wore a red and blue cockade. These examples 
will serve to show how affirmations are treated in 
the establishment of a fact. 

Thus far we have dealt only with the direct testi- 
mony of eyewitnesses, that is, with the most satis- 
factory kind of sources. For a large part of the his- 
tory of Europe very little of this direct testimony 
exists. Compare our knowledge of the events of the 
French revolution with that of the history of the 
Greeks and Romans. Why do we know so much less 
about this earlier history and why is so much of our 
knowledge untrustworthy? The difference is due to 

[117] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

the difference in the quantity and quality of the 
sources. 

Take the statement that the Boeotians migrated 
from Thessaly to Boeotia before the Trojan war. It 
rests on the authority of Thucydides. When did the 
Trojan war take place, if there ever was a Trojan 
war? The traditional date is about iooo B. C. Who 
was Thucydides, when did he live and write? He 
was an Athenian and lived and wrote about 400 
B. C, that is, about six hundred years after the sup- 
posed migrations. How did Thucydides know any- 
thing about an event happening six hundred years 
before his day? 

How do we know anything about what happened 
in 1300 A. D.? From the records of the time, but 
our knowledge of the events of 1300 is more reliable 
than the knowledge of Thucydides touching what 
happened six hundred years before his day, because 
in the fourteenth century men made, written records 
of what happened; in the eleventh century B. C, 
they did not, nor for two centuries later. 

For two hundred years, then, after the migration 
from Thessaly to central Greece — if it took place — 
the knowledge of the event must have been kept alive 
among an ignorant people solely by oral tradition. 
And what is an oral tradition worth that has cir- 
culated for two hundred years ! Then it must have 
been written down and copied many times before it 
reached Thucydides at the end of six hundred years. 
Under these circumstances, does the affirmation of 

[us] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

Thucydides have any great value in establishing the 
fact of the migration? 

Take any chapter of Holm's History of Greece 
and examine the footnotes given in support of the 
statements in the texts. Mark when the events took 
place, then note what the source is, who wrote it and 
when he wrote it. The amount of evidence that can 
be placed in the same class with that used above on 
the French revolution is practically nil. I am speak- 
ing, of course, of the testimony of eyewitnesses and 
not of documents. Herodotus is the chief source for 
the Persian wars, and, if he was alive at the time, 
he was an infant and could not have known anything 
about it personally. Plutarch is constantly cited as a 
source in Greek history and investigation will show 
that in the majority of cases the events he narrates 
occurred several hundred years before his own time 
and his information reached him after passing 
through many hands. Strabo is the chief source on 
Greek colonization, and yet he lived several hundred 
years after the colonies were founded. Even when 
the events are reported by a mature contemporary 
like Thucydides (the Peloponnesian war), Xeno- 
phon, or Polybius, still but a small part of what is re- 
ported by these historians could have been seen or 
heard by them personally. 

Not all of our knowledge of any period rests upon 
the direct affirmations of eyewitnesses or the repeti- 
tion of their reports by others. The historian also 
reaches conclusions touching what happened by 

[119] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



means of inference, or constructive reasoning, as the 
process is called. The lawyer calls this kind of evi- 
dence circumstantial. An event takes place, some- 
thing is done, but nobody but the actor witnessed it. 
From an examination of all the evidence we are led 
to the conclusion that it must have been done by a 
certain person. 

A prominent citizen of Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, disappeared. He was last seen going into the 
laboratory of a professor of chemistry in Harvard 
College. The professor declared that he knew noth- 
ing of the man's whereabouts. It was known that the 
professor was the debtor of this gentleman and was 
finding it difficult to pay him. The janitor had noticed 
that the professor worked in his laboratory with 
locked doors. He examined the refuse from the pro- 
fessor's furnace and among other objects found 
teeth filled with gold. A local dentist recognized the 
teeth as belonging to the man who had disappeared. 
Other evidence was discovered indicating that the 
professor had cremated a human body in his labora- 
tory and that the body was that of the missing man. 
The inference was that the professor had killed him. 
Later the professor confessed that the man had come 
to his laboratory, had demanded payment and that 
in a fit of anger he had struck and unintentionally 
killed him. 

The records of the criminal courts are full of 
cases in which the guilt of the prosecuted persons 
can be established by circumstantial evidence alone. 

[ 120] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

In every case, our belief that the supposed criminal 
committed the deed is due to an inference from facts 
established by direct testimony. The value of this in- 
ference depends upon (i) the number of the facts 
established by direct testimony, (2) the closeness 
with which they fit together and (3) the improba- 
bility that any other fact than the fact established 
by inference could be fitted into the vacant space. 

The work is not unlike the piecing together of a 
picture puzzle ; when all the pieces are in place, one 
small hole has not been filled. What was the missing 
piece like? In some cases there can be no doubt. We 
were putting together a human figure, and perhaps 
a finger, an eye, or a button on the coat is missing. 
The problem is an easy one and our inference rises 
to the level of certainty. But there may be more than 
one piece missing, the holes to be filled in might be 
filled in different ways and one reconstruction might 
be as reasonable as another. There uncertainty be- 
gins and our inferences fall very low in the scale of 
probability. 

Suppose we were standing with some person in the 
room of a house. We pass out of this room into an- 
other, leaving the person in the room, making our 
exit by the only door in the room. As we pass into 
the adjoining room, a man hurries past us with a 
knife in his hand and enters the room we have left. 
Immediately afterwards, we hear a cry and a fall, 
and, as we turn back, the stranger runs past us and 
escapes from the house. We enter the room and find 

[121] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

lying on the floor the bleeding body of the person 
we had left there and by his side the knife — blood- 
stained — which we had seen in the hand of the 
stranger. We did not see the deed, but we infer that 
the murder was committed by the stranger. No one 
else was in the room, no one else could have entered 
the room. The knife in the hand of the stranger, the 
short interval that elapsed after he entered the room 
before the cry was heard, seem to leave room for 
no other inference than that he was the murderer. 

But change the evidence a bit. Let there be two 
doors to the room ; have two men in the room, seem- 
ingly in friendly conversation when we leave; allow 
a longer interval to elapse and add the sound of 
angry voices, heard from the room where we are, 
followed by a cry and fall. We enter the room and 
find a dead man stretched on the floor and the other 
man standing over him knife in hand. He tells us 
that a stranger did the deed and he simply drew the 
knife from the wound. No stranger can be found 
and the only plausible inference is that the one man 
killed the other as the result of a quarrel. There is, 
however, no evidence to show that the angry voices 
were the voices of these two men, and the possibility 
always remains that, as the defendant declares, some 
one else entered, quarrelled with and killed the other 
man in the presence of his friend. 

The method of constructive reasoning may take on 
a negative character in the so-called "argument from 
silence." An individual who was well informed as to 

[ 122 ] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

what took place at a certain place and within a cer- 
tain time, writes about the events but does not men- 
tion a certain detail. It was a detail he would prob- 
ably have known about and mentioned had it taken 
place; as he did not mention it, we infer it did not 
take place. There is much greater danger in this kind 
of reasoning than in positive inferences, because it is 
difficult to determine ( i ) whether the witness could 
have seen or heard the thing had it taken place and 
(2) whether he would certainly have recorded it had 
he seen it. 

An excellent illustration of the danger lurking in 
this kind of reasoning is found in the royal session 
of June 23, 1789. It was in this session that Mira- 
beau made his famous reply to Breze. Several in- 
dependent witnesses, writing at the time, establish 
the certainty of the fact. The fact was an important 
one, must have been known, one would imagine, by 
every deputy in the hall and, had it been known, cer- 
tainly would have been reported; and yet two of 
the deputies, Biauzat — in a letter to his constituents 
written that day — and Barere — in his newspaper, 
he point du jour, written the same day — make no 
mention of the Mirabeau episode. If these two 
sources contained the only descriptions written by 
eyewitnesses of what took place on June 23 after 
the withdrawal of the king and if the accounts of 
Mirabeau's reply to Breze were found only in con- 
temporary works written by men who were not eye- 
witnesses, would we not be likely to say that in this 

[ 123 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

case the argument from silence must be applied, that 
the Mirabeau incident never actually occurred? 

Constructive reasoning should be employed only 
with the greatest caution, and the results stated in a 
scientific way, without any attempt to make them ap- 
pear more probable than they really are. As train- 
ing in exact work and as a means of control, it is well 
to arrange the inferences in logical form, thus mak- 
ing clear the fallacy in the argument, if there is one. 

For instance, it is common in dealing with ancient 
history to infer that certain places in the Mediter- 
ranean were settled by Phoenicians because they 
bear Phoenician names. Let us put the argument into 
logical form. We note, as a matter of fact, the exist- 
ence here and there of Phoenician names. This we 
are certain of. We have observed that it is a com- 
mon practice for a people to give to a town a name 
taken from their own language. This we formulate 
in a major premise, "the names of towns are taken 
from the language of their founders"; as a minor 
premise, "the names of these towns are taken from 
the Phoenician language," hence "these towns were 
founded by Phoenicians." Upon what does the 
soundness of that conclusion rest ? Upon two things, 
( i ) the number and correctness of the facts forming 
the foundation for the minor premise and (2) the 
universal validity of the major premise. Is it true 
that the names of towns are always taken from the 
language of their founders? It certainly is not. All 
through the western states of America can be found 

[ 124] 



ESTABLISHMENT OF FACTS 

towns with Indian and Spanish names, but the In- 
dians and Spanish had nothing to do with their 
founding. 

The results of constructive reasoning should not 
be confounded with facts established by direct testi- 
mony. In some cases, the conditions may be such that 
our inference possesses a very high degree of proba- 
bility, almost certainty, but even then a slight element 
of doubt remains. For this reason, a synthesis based 
largely on constructive reasoning can never have the 
scientific value of one based on the testimony of eye- 
witnesses. In the next stage in the process of histori- 
cal reconstruction, the grouping of the facts, this dis- 
tinction between the two classes of material should 
always be kept consciously in mind. 



[125] 



VII 

SYNTHESIS, OR GROUPING OF THE 

FACTS 

The preceding step in method leaves us with a het- 
erogeneous mass of data, some of which are certain, 
many only probable. It is now in order to organize 
these data into a complex, unique, evolving whole, 
the parts of which stand in causal relation to each 
other. 

Although for the purpose of exposition it is usual 
and necessary to treat successively the steps in his- 
torical method, as if each step were completed be- 
fore the next had been begun, in practice this is not 
true. The grouping of the facts begins at the very 
outset of the investigation. The reading of a single 
source gives us our first idea of the subject as a whole 
and with that conception in mind we read the next 
source, modifying our first conception to bring it into 
harmony with the new evidence. And so the process 
goes on, weaving back and forth, from the fact to 
the general conception and from the general concep- 
tion back to the new fact, until all the data have been 
examined and the general conception is complete. 
This first, unconscious synthesis is not a critically 

[126] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

constructed whole; it will be modified later by the 
criticism of the documents and by the establishment 
of the facts, but the large outlines of the subject will 
not, probably, be very much changed. 

It is with this general conception in mind, the by- 
product of the preceding steps, that we turn to ex- 
amine carefully the data resulting from criticism, 
(i) to set bounds to our subject, (2) to divide it 
into periods, (3) to decide what facts are to form 
part of the synthesis and what are to be discarded, 

(4) what causal connection exists between the parts, 

(5) what change has been effected by the historic 
action, (6) what parts shall be emphasized and 
what touched upon but lightly and, finally, (7) how 
many data shall be used for the sake of color to pro- 
duce verisimilitude in the reproduction of the past. 

The first practical problem to be dealt with is the 
limitation of the subject. An historical episode has 
theoretically no beginning and no end, everything 
being in turn both cause and effect. But while the 
world's history runs on without break from begin- 
ning to end, a careful examination of the whole 
movement reveals acts and scenes in great variety, 
offering to the investigator the possibility of limiting 
his work. For limitation is imperatively necessary, 
if the investigator is to penetrate below the surface. 
Every historian cannot write a history of the world 
based upon first-hand information; he must limit 
himself to a scene or an act, he must begin some- 
where and end somewhere. He must drive a stake in 

[ 127 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

the glacier of time to mark the beginning of his task 
and one to mark its end. 

These dates do not fix the limits, but are them- 
selves fixed by our conception of what constitutes the 
unity of our subject. If we are dealing with the foun- 
dation of the German empire, the question is, where 
did the movement begin that terminated in the Ger- 
man empire and at what time did that movement 
culminate, that is, at what time was the empire es- 
tablished. The last date is not difficult to fix, being 
found in the proclamation of the empire, but just 
where the movement began is a matter more difficult 
to deal with. It certainly had begun when the Schles- 
wig-Holstein question became an issue between Prus- 
sia and Austria in 1865, but our synthesis would 
probably have to go farther back and deal with the 
organization of the Prussian army and probably 
even farther still to the failure to establish the em- 
pire in 1849. 

If our subject were the French revolution, we 
should have some difficulty in fixing both beginning 
and end. Our treatment could hardly begin with 
1789; it must go back at least to 1787 and the as- 
sembly of the notables, if it is to be intelligible, even 
to 1774, to Turgot and his reforms (1774). For 
an understanding of the formation of public opinion 
and the role of the parlements, our search for origins 
may take us back to 1748. At the other end, it would 
be difficult to decide where to stop short of 1795. If 

[128] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

we pass 1795, there are weighty reasons for not stop- 
ping at 1799. 

In dealing with the whole problem, whether we 
shall embrace more or less in a synthesis, we are in- 
evitably influenced, if we are to write a book or a 
thesis, by the practical consideration of the number 
of pages we have at our disposal. This is true even 
of the paper of an undergraduate. If the space is 
limited and the treatment of the subject aims to be 
full, then the scope must be limited to make possible 
a full and detailed treatment. But this practical limi- 
tation in the formulation of the results of our re- 
search, the limitation that announces to us, "You 
must say what you have to say in five thousand 
words; see that you waste none of them," is after all 
a secondary matter. The primary question is, if we 
have material enough for a paper of ten thousand 
words and must limit ourselves to five thousand, 
what shall be retained and what discarded? How 
shall we discriminate between the essential and the 
unessential? It is the question of values, the funda- 
mental question in historical synthesis and the one 
concerning which there is least agreement among 
historians today. 

What is the meaning of the term value in histori- 
cal construction? Clearly not the expression of opin- 
ion as to whether a certain fact or group of facts is 
good or bad, useful or useless today, but whether the 
fact or group has any importance for a given syn- 
thesis and, hence, should form an integral part of it. 

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THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



It is a teleological question, for, in the last analysis, 
the whole question of historical synthesis is a teleo- 
logical question. Not, for the most part, a question 
of what should be the goal of man's unique activity 
in society, but what has been the goal; what, in spe- 
cific cases, was the end aimed at and attained by 
man's unique, social activity. 

For instance, man's unique social activities built 
up the Roman empire, formed united Italy and 
united Germany and transformed the thirteen Eng- 
lish colonies in North America into a nation. The 
unification of Italy is an accomplished fact, the re- 
sult of conscious effort aimed at the accomplishment 
of a definite end. Assuming that it has historical 
value, that is, is an important fact in European his- 
tory, the historian attempts to show how it was at- 
tained. What facts shall enter into his synthesis? If 
no limit were set to the length of the exposition, it 
would include all acts that contributed to the unifica- 
tion of Italy and that should, therefore, appear as 
parts of the complex whole which we call a synthesis. 
But if the length of the exposition is limited, then it 
becomes necessary to distinguish the more important 
from the less important facts. 

The limitations placed upon the exposition will 
not permit, for example, the inclusion both of the 
conference between Napoleon and Cavour at Plom- 
bieres and the unsuccessful revolutionary undertak- 
ing of Mazzini in Genoa. Which shall be omitted? 
The problem is not solved by our interest in Cavour 

[ 130] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

or Mazzini, but by our estimate of the importance 
of these specific acts for the end in view, namely, the 
unification of Italy, and without hesitation we treat 
the interview of Plombieres as the more important; 
without it, what followed would not be intelligible. 

Again, the problem of value might be one of em- 
phasis and not of omission. Both facts may and 
should be included, but one may be more fully de- 
veloped than the other. Which should receive the 
fuller development? Evidently the one that played 
the more important part in bringing about uni- 
fication. 

To say that in order to determine what facts shall 
enter into a synthesis and which of these facts shall 
be emphasized the historian must see the subject as a 
whole, would seem to be equivalent to saying that 
the synthesis must exist before it is created. For if 
the synthesis is made up of facts selected by the his- 
torian because of their value for the whole, he must 
know what the whole is before he selects his facts to 
compose it. But like many another logical dilemma 
this one is not so serious as it seems. 

In practice, the historian begins his research with 
some general idea of the whole subject obtained 
from secondary works. As he reads over the sources 
he has gathered, the original conception of the whole 
is constantly being enlarged and corrected, and this 
enlarged and corrected whole reacts upon the work 
of collecting and interpreting the evidence. Evidence 
which was considered highly important, in the early 

[131] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 



stages of the investigation, may lose in importance 
as the result of further study, while facts considered 
unimportant at first, may, in a later stage, become 
highly important. When the evidence is all in, the 
problem of what the whole is and what facts are 
important for the whole has been solved in a rough 
way.^The formal outline serves as a court of final 
revision in which the entire ground is gone over 
again and earlier judgments confirmed or reversed. 

Assuming the value of Italian unification for Eu- 
ropean history, the problem of synthesis raises no 
metaphysical difficulty. But suppose its value were 
doubted, how could it be demonstrated? Simply by 
considering the importance of the realization of 
Italian unity for the understanding of that larger 
whole, of which it forms a part, European history. 
If one of the ends — and a very important one — of 
man's unique social activity in Europe is the forma- 
tion of a united Europe, then it should be clear that 
the unification of Italy and the unification of Ger- 
many are important steps in that teleological process, 
are important facts, valuable for the larger syn- 
thesis. In the same way, we would test the value of 
European history for the largest possible synthesis, 
a world history. 

If no metaphysical elements have appeared, up to 
this point, in the treatment of the logic of the syn- 
thesis, it is partly due to the fact of the limitation of 
the field dealt with in the synthesis. This will become 
clear, if we consider the problem of a synthesis of the 

[ 132 ] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

world's history as a complex whole and not simply 
from the point of view of outward unity and social 
framework. Let us face the problem at once by ask- 
ing: What shall enter into a history of the world? 
Shall it deal with all sides of man's unique develop- 
ment, economic, educational, political, scientific, ar- 
tistic, philosophical and religious or with only one 
or two of these, the economic and political, for ex- 
ample? If with all, where is the emphasis to be laid? 
Which of these activities is the more important? Im- 
portant for what? Here we are in the very inner 
sanctuary of metaphysics. 

It should become clear that the construction of a 
world synthesis presupposes a philosophy of life. 
Is society, in all its outward manifestations, an end 
in itself or only a means to an end? If so, what is 
that end? Is it, as Eucken has said, "the development 
of a spiritual content in life"? Is the chief end of 
man's unique social activity the development of hu- 
man personality to the highest point? Is there any 
possible proof of this? But if it is only a working 
hypothesis, has it any less reality than if it could be 
demonstrated? Can man, in his unique activities as a 
social being, escape the formation of a working hy- 
pothesis. 

If, on the other hand, he approached the historic 
reality with the assumption that life is purely mate- 
rialistic, that man, society and all the tangible and 
intangible products of man's social activities will 
finally disappear, has he done anything more than 

[ 133 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

form a working hypothesis? And when he formu- 
lates the one or the other is he doing anything more 
or anything less than expressing his opinion upon the 
meaning of history as a whole, upon the philosophy 
of history? Has he not always done so? Could he 
and can he escape doing so? What are the so-called 
political, economic and religious interpretations of 
history, if not expressions of a philosophy of life? 

In forming the synthesis of the world's history, 
then, the ground for the choice of data to enter into 
it still remains one of value, but we can no longer 
agree upon what the whole is. If the end is in view 
and is, for example, the unification of Italy, we have 
firm ground to stand upon. But what is the end of the 
world's history? If we must wait until the end is 
reached before we write the world's history, unable 
before we know the end to determine what the im- 
portant facts are, no mortal will ever write it. The 
basis for the choice of our facts must be, in the case 
of universal history, the thing aimed at, rather than 
the thing accomplished. 

What a world's history shall be, will depend upon 
the philosophy of life of the writer of the history. 
What significance would the burning of Giordano 
Bruno at Rome have for the historian with a mate- 
rialistic philosophy of life? Why should a man sacri- 
fice his life for an idea ! What meaning would the 
statue of Bruno, erected upon the spot where he 
was burned at the stake, have for the historian who 
attached no vital significance to the deeds of the 

[134] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

spirit? Would the heaping of flowers on the bronze 
tablet marking the spot where Savonarola was 
burned, not bring a pitying smile to his face? The 
conception of values, determined by the working hy- 
pothesis of the meaning of history as a whole, will 
naturally influence the entire synthesis of history. 
Such a conception of values the people of each gener- 
ation has had and the people of every generation 
must have, if it will give unity to its life's work. 

As a rule, the historian does not go to world his- 
tory for his standards of value. He is supposed to 
have met all practical requirements, if he has 
grasped as a whole the period he is describing and in- 
troduced into his synthesis only such facts as are im- 
portant for the teleological appreciation of the 
whole. He does not incorporate into his synthesis 
everything he encounters on his way, no matter how 
interesting, but only such facts as constitute the very 
bone and tissue of the structure he is building. It is 
sufficiently difficult to conform even to this standard; 
in fact, most historians fall far short of it. 

To know that certain facts should form part of 
an historical synthesis is one thing; to know how to 
combine these facts so that they will form a complex 
whole is quite another. Investigation has placed in 
our hands a great mass of facts, economic, political 
and religious. How shall they be arranged within 
the limits we have set for the study? Shall we narrate 
them in the chronological order in which* they hap- 
pened, one after the other, doing the work of an an- 

[135] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

nalist? In that case, we should lay ourselves open to 
the well-known criticism that "facts and facts do not 
constitute history." The whole must have logical 
unity, the facts must be presented in their causal con- 
nection. Logical unity demands that facts of the same 
kind should be grouped together; causal connection 
assumes that the facts will be so arranged as to make 
clear how one complex situation grows out of the 
preceding complex situation. To meet these require- 
ments, the facts must be arranged in series and the 
series must be combined into a complex, causally con- 
nected whole. 

Let us take as an illustration the period of the 
French revolution lying between July, 1787, and July, 
1790. This forms a natural whole. The first date 
marks the demand of the parlement of Paris for the 
calling of the states general which, as the constituent 
assembly, was to make a constitution and transform 
France; the last date is that of the great celebration 
on the Champ de Mars, when delegations from all 
parts of France gathered around the altar of the 
country and solemnly swore to maintain the consti- 
tution which had been made by the national as- 
sembly. 

This larger period falls naturally into two of un- 
equal length; the first, extending from July, 1787, to 
July, 1789, has to do with the history of the states 
general and its transformation into a national assem- 
bly, ending with the revolution of July, 1789; the 
second, covering a period of one year, was marked 

[136] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

by the abolition of privileges and the reorganization 
and unification of France. To synthesize the first 
period is a matter of no great difficulty, as we have 
to do largely with a single series; in the second 
period, however, the increased complexity of the 
subject matter increases the number of series and 
consequently the difficulty of synthesizing them. 

The first step toward the solution of the problem 
is to ascertain how many series will be needed and to 
construct the various series in turn, tracing the single 
thread through the whole period. We should then 
have, for example, a political series, falling into the 
sub-series of (i) the policy of the king and court, (2) 
the policy of Necker and his associates, (3) the at- 
tempts of members of the assembly to form a min- 
istry, (4) the work of the assembly in reorganizing 
and governing France and (5) the application of 
the new constitution; an economic series, with the 
sub-series (1) feudal rights, (2) finance, (3) church 
and state lands, (4) food supply and (5) the unem- 
ployed; an ecclesiastical series dealing with (1) 
the abolition of the clergy as an order, (2) the abo- 
lition of monasteries and convents, (3) the seizure 
and sale of church property, (4) the civil constitu- 
tion of the clergy and (5) the relations of France to 
the papacy. The fifth subdivision would divide again 
into (a) the relations of the clergy with the pope, 
(b) the relations of the king with the pope and (c) 
the official relations of the ministry with the pope. 
Each one of these sub-series should be worked out as 

[ 137 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

a causal development in chronological order, the sub- 
series combined into a series and the series into the 
final complex whole. 

In selecting from a mass of facts those which are 
to form parts of an historical series, the historian 
has to do with the first logical distinction between 
the synthesis of history and the synthesis of natural 
science. The method of doing a thing is determined 
by what one wants to do. A logical method is one 
which adapts means to ends the most successfully 
and with the least expenditure of effort. The aim of 
the natural scientist is to organize reality through an 
understanding of what objects have in common. 
These resemblances form the basis of generaliza- 
tions — laws — more or less comprehensive and these 
in turn make prediction possible. It is noted that 
when the same conditions are reproduced, the same 
results follow. 

The historian, on the contrary, is interested in 
what the natural scientist passes by. His object is 
not to note resemblances, but differences; not to 
formulate generalizations — laws — but to construct 
complex, unique wholes. The aims being different, 
the methods are necessarily different. 

Both the historian and the natural scientist — here 
the sociologist — must use past social facts, both must 
establish the truth of their facts by the application of 
critical methods, but the moment the work of syn- 
thesis begins they part company. In deciding what 
human activities — whether of individuals or of 

[ 138 ] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

groups — shall enter into his complex synthesis, the 
historian is not guided by what these activities have 
in common with other activities, but by the individual 
characteristics distinguishing them from other activi- 
ties. Luther's importance for the reformation is not 
found in what his activities had in common with 
other Germans of his day, but in acts that were pe- 
culiarly his own. The sociologist may be interested, 
in a legitimate way, in what the French revolution 
has in common with other revolutions, but the busi- 
ness of the historian is to trace its characteristic 
differences. These differences can not be formulated 
as laws, but must be described as parts of a complex, 
unique, changing whole. As the historian searches 
through past social facts, he constantly asks himself : 
"Which of these facts are important for the complex, 
unique whole I am trying to construct? Which should 
form a part of it and how important a part?" The 
facts selected, he endeavors to arrange them in the 
form of causally connected series. 

In the treatment of a sub-series, the facts of the 
series should be arranged in chronological order for 
study, in order to determine the number of main 
groups into which the series should be divided. As, 
for example, in dealing with the work of the French 
national assembly in making a constitution, we would 
have the creation of a first committee and its report, 
the creation of a second committee and its report, the 
declaration of rights, the foundations of the consti- 
tution, the division of France into departments and 

[ 139] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

districts and the creation of municipalities. Each of 
these heads in turn would become a main head under 
which the facts would be grouped and this subdi- 
vision would be continued until we reach the single 
undivided fact. 

But even the single series is not free from the per- 
plexities due to parallel activities. For example, be- 
fore the legislation on departmental organization 
was completed, the assembly began the consideration 
of municipal organization and up to the end of 
December, 1789, both subjects occupied the atten- 
tion of the assembly. Here the rational course is to 
make two sub-series, following the debates on each 
to the end, that is, to the passing of the decrees cre- 
ating departments and municipalities, then to com- 
bine these sub-series, in the order ( 1 ) departments, 
(2) municipalities, and to incorporate them into the 
larger outline of the political activities. This will 
necessitate some chronological overlapping, but that 
is inevitable in any good synthesis. 

The grouping of single facts in the smallest sub- 
division of the series will call for a re-examination 
of the pages of the notebook in which the facts were 
established with the citation of the sources. It is wise, 
when the facts have been given their place in the out- 
line, to transfer to the outline at the same time the 
references to the sources. They may be inserted on 
the right-hand side of the outline or entered on a 
sheet arranged to face the outline, the connection be- 
tween the outline and the references being marked 

[ 140] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

by figures attached to the facts of the outline and pre- 
fixed to the notes. When the exposition is reached, 
the references are all at hand and may be readily 
appended to the text. 

Several historical series, no matter how well 
worked out, do not constitute a historical synthesis. 
To finish the work, these series must be combined 
into an organic whole. This is the most difficult part 
of the synthesis and is seldom accomplished in an 
ideal manner. A succession of unrelated chapters 
printed together in a book do not, for that reason, 
constitute an organic whole. The history of Europe, 
for example, is something more than the histories of, 
the countries of Europe and something different 
from these; if it were not, there would be no reason 
for attempting to write it. Although a volume made 
up of unrelated chapters, if each chapter is well or- 
ganized, represents an advance over the volume in 
which the facts are simply narrated in their chrono- 
logical order, it is only a torso. 

How can the different series be combined into an 
organic whole ? By bringing them into vital relation 
with each other and by shifting the narrative from 
one series to another as the interest shifts. Follow 
one series as long as it occupies the center of the 
stage, allowing the other series to drop out of sight. 
When the interest shifts to another series, drop the 
first, but before following the new series from the 
point where it impinges on the old, pick up as many 

[ hi ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

of the back threads of the new series as may be nec- 
essary for the understanding of what is to follow. 

Suppose, for example, we have narrated the his- 
tory of the states general of 1789, as far as the up- 
rising of July of that year. The interest, up to that 
time, had been centered at Versailles. It now passes 
to Paris and from Paris to France. Shall we continue 
to follow the events in Versailles and Paris, or turn 
to the provinces and trace the course of the muni- 
cipal revolution, "the great fear," the arming of 
the peasants and the attack on the chateaux? The 
assembly had begun to make the constitution and 
was discussing the declaration of rights. Important 
as this was, what was going on in the provinces was 
bigger and more important. Moreover, the move- 
ment in the provinces was such a natural result of 
the Paris uprising that it would be a violation of his- 
torical continuity as well as an error in the judgment 
of values not to follow this movement to the fron- 
tiers instead of remaining quietly in Versailles, listen- 
ing to the debates of the assembly. 

Artistic reasons might also be adduced for follow- 
ing this order. How effective the presentation is 
which follows the great sweep of the revolution over 
the provinces, describes the destruction of the feu- 
dal records by the peasants, the accompanying dis- 
orders, the return wave to Versailles, the reports of 
violence flowing in upon the assembly from all sides, 
the creation of a committee to examine them, its re- 
ports on August 3, the revised report on the night of 

[ 142 ] 






GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

August 4, and the opening of the dramatic scene that 
ended with the sweeping away of the remnants of 
feudal rights in France! How much more effective 
such a synthesis is than one which follows the acts 
of the assembly to the last of July, without recount- 
ing the revolution in the provinces, and only when 
the reports of violence begin to come in turns back 
to pick up the threads, to recount the great July 
revolution, the arming of the peasants and the prac- 
tical destruction of feudalism. 

Following the first order, after dealing with the 
debates on feudal rights and the voting of the final 
decree, we would turn to the work on the constitu- 
tion, recall the reports of the two committees created 
in July, the debates on the advisability of formulat- 
ing a declaration of rights, and then go on to consider 
the debates on the declaration itself, leaving the 
events in the provinces behind the scene. Versailles 
once more holds the center of the stage. The question 
under discussion, — after the declaration had been 
disposed of, — "Shall the king have the veto power?" 
aroused a feverish interest in the people of France. 
It involved the problem of the limitation of arbi- 
trary power, one of the two great problems of the 
revolution. 

At the close of the debates on the foundations of 
the constitution, Paris thrust itself into the fore- 
ground by the insurrection of October 5, 1789, and 
an opportunity is given to consider the questions of 
food supply; the intrigues of the court; the reaction- 

[ 143 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

ary movement in the assembly; the distrust of the 
people of Paris and their desire to have the king 
in Paris, a desire entertained also by the French 
Guards, former guards of the king at Versailles, now 
the paid nucleus of the Paris militia; the calling of 
the regiment of Flanders, and the banquet given by 
the king's bodyguard on October i. All of these 
events are causes of the insurrection, must be dealt 
with to bring the insurrection into causal connection 
with the larger revolutionary movement and form 
important sub-series naturally considered at the 
point where they impinge on the political series un- 
der consideration. 

To decide how far back each of these sub-series 
should be followed, how fully it should be treated 
and how the sub-series can be combined into a com- 
plex causally related whole is a task of no little dif- 
ficulty. The practical consideration of space limita- 
tions — number of pages and words in the finished 
study — must always be kept in mind and good 
judgment must be exercised in eliminating unimpor- 
tant matter to make room for more important. The 
subject must be so thoroughly mastered as a whole 
and in detail that there will be no uncertainty about 
chronological order and as little as possible about 
causal connection. 

The assembly was engaged in making a constitu- 
tion. The connecting link between this series and the 
events of October 5 and 6 is found in the belief of 
the people of Paris that the national assembly was 

[ 144] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

becoming reactionary. It was also reported in Paris 
that the king was planning a flight to Metz. This sit- 
uation gave birth to the idea that the king and as- 
sembly should be brought to Paris. The French 
Guards encouraged this idea that they might resume 
their posts as royal guards held before the July in- 
surrection. An attempt on the part of the guards to 
go to Versailles to bring the king to Paris was 
thwarted by Lafayette, but led to the strengthening 
of the garrison of Versailles by the calling of the 
regiment of Flanders. 

The banquet of October i, given in the theatre of 
the chateau to the officers of the new regiment by the 
bodyguards of the king, was evidently intended to 
create a sentiment of attachment to the royal family. 
Reports that the national assembly had been omitted 
from the toasts, that the tricolored cockade had been 
trampled under foot and pronounced anti-revolu- 
tionary sentiment shown in other ways aroused the 
indignation of the people of Paris and rendered a 
popular outbreak highly probable. 

The immediate cause of the insurrection is found 
in the lack of bread, and an account of the role played 
in the history of Paris during the summer of 1789 
by the defective food supply naturally ends with a 
description of the first fact in the uprising, the arrest 
of the baker of Saint-Eustache, in the early morning 
of October 5, charged with selling bread under 
weight. From this beginning, the events of October 
5 and 6 follow in a natural causal order. 

[ 145 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

The combination of single facts into series and 
series into complex wholes implies causal connection. 
In history, as in natural science, there is no effect 
without a cause, but causality in natural science ex- 
presses itself as causal law — the effect being equal to 
the cause — while in history it takes the form of 
causal connection, one complex group being the effect 
of that which precedes it. The statement that the 
cause is always equal to the effect is true of a syn- 
thesis in natural science, but not of an historical syn- 
thesis. In history, a small cause — the resentment of 
Madame de Pompadour — may produce a great 
effect, or a great cause may be utterly without effect. 
The cause could be equal to the effect only in a system 
of logic from which the individual, the unique, had 
been eliminated. The causal law is part of a system 
which concerns itself with resemblances, notes repe- 
titions and formulates generalizations or laws. 

To both systems — natural science and historical 
science — causality applies. There is nothing without 
cause either in natural science or in historical science, 
but in natural science causality finds expression in the 
law that the cause is always equal to the effect, while 
in historical science it takes the shape of causal con- 
nection. 

To the historian, it is interesting to know that a 
lighted match thrown into a barrel of shavings may 
destroy a great city; he has convincing proof that the 
thing has been done. To the objection of the natural 
scientist that this is an insufficient explanation of 

[i 4 6] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

what has taken place, he replies that it is quite suf- 
ficient in a system which takes account only of the 
individual, which is concerned with noting how each 
occurrence differs from every other, with grasping 
the whole in its complexity. He acknowledges that 
it is interesting and important to know that in this 
fire can be found something common to all fires, a 
law of combustion, but when the knowledge sought 
relates to the unique it is not to be satisfied by infor- 
mation concerning the general. The natural scientist 
may discover his causal law at work by eliminating 
from the problem all that is individual, all that in- 
terests the historian, retaining only what is common 
to all conflagrations and this causal law will be quite 
as true, in its way, as the historian's causal connec- 
tion : the one supplements the other. 

It is not incumbent upon the historian, then, to 
seek for laws; it is incumbent upon him to show 
causal connection, to make clear that one group of 
facts is in causal connection with another group, to 
bind all the groups together causally from the be- 
ginning to the end of the synthesis. In such a syn- 
thesis there should be nothing isolated, no flotsam 
and jetsam of curious facts, but all should be held 
together in a necessary connection in which each fact 
has its place. To the question, "Is such a synthesis 
possible?" one would make answer as Ranke did to 
the query whether a universal history such as he had 
conceived could be written: "It must, perforce," he 
replied, "be attempted." 

[ 147] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

Improvement in historical synthesis means an ap- 
proach to this goal. With each generation, the facts 
are established with more certainty, the series are 
worked out in greater fulness and some advance is 
made in the effort to combine these series into a 
complete causally connected whole. If we would not 
attempt too much, but would be content with a small 
piece of work well done, the greater synthesis would 
advance more rapidly. 

It is only through causal connection that an event 
becomes intelligible. Detach the French revolution in 
France from its relations with Europe- — from the 
foreign wars — and the uprisings of June 20 and 
August 10, 1792, the September massacres and the 
reign of terror become unintelligible ; they seem the 
work of men demented. The explanation of a nar- 
rative made up of disconnected episodes, of unex- 
plained events, is found in a lack of knowledge; the 
remedy is further research. 

For a long time it was said in explanation of the 
conquest of the Greek world by Philip of Macedon 
that the Greeks were no longer the men of Mara- 
thon and Salamis; more thorough investigation has 
found the cause in the unequal struggle of a disunited 
group of small states against a territorial monarchy 
with large resources in men and money, ruled by a 
great soldier and statesman. 

The federation of the Champ de Mars of July 14, 
1790, is usually presented as a spectacular event, in- 
nocent of all connection with what had preceded it, 

[148] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

bursting upon our unprepared vision like a rocket ex- 
ploding in a dark night. What a different impression 
the event makes when we see it as the culmination of 
a movement that was the outcome of the July up- 
rising of 1789, small in its beginnings, growing 
steadily more general, month by month, embracing 
greater areas and larger bodies of men, until it 
sweeps in like a great wave upon Paris. Thus con- 
ceived, it becomes one of the most significant and 
thrilling events not only of the French revolution, 
but of the entire history of France, it marks the birth 
of the spiritual unity of the French people, the out- 
come of eighteen centuries of French history. 

There are many events like this, forming the 
termination of a long causal series running through 
centuries. To the scientific mind, the seizure of Rome 
by the Italians in the fall of 1870 is fully intelligible 
only when the causal connection has been traced back 
to Pippin and to the creation of the temporal power 
of the popes. If it is said that it is easier to see such 
causal connection when it has been pointed out than 
it is to discover it for one's self, the answer would be 
that if sufficient evidence exists to enable the investi- 
gator to establish the facts and combine them into 
series, if he will gaze long and attentively at his 
series, if he will but press them for their larger sig- 
nificance and causal connection, he will seldom fail 
to get his reward. 

There are things, however, that cannot be taught, 
that can find no place in formal method. The great 

[ 149 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

historian adds to his knowledge of method, an in- 
sight, a genius for seeing wholes in scattered frag- 
ments, of detecting causal connections that makes a 
great and vital synthesis possible. He is a great artist 
as well as a great scientist. Much instruction may be 
found, by him for whom the talent of hard work 
must take the place of genius, in the synthesis of his- 
torians like Ranke, who has given us so many classi- 
cal examples of the grouping of masses of facts into 
organic wholes. The young student of history could 
hardly do better than go to school to him, to learn 
from his great narratives the technique of a great 
master. 

A well-organized synthesis must do something 
more than present a series of events in causal con- 
nection; it must also display unique change. For 
unique change is one of the essential characteristics 
of history. History is dynamic; it deals with man- 
kind in action and its purpose is to trace the unique 
changes which are the result of these activities. In 
real life, a group of individuals, living under certain 
unique conditions, moved by certain motives, act in 
an individual way and modify the social conditions 
existing when the action began. Any synthesis that 
does not make clear these three things, ( i ) the orig- 
inal condition, (2) the action and (3) the novelty in 
the resulting conditions fails to meet the legitimate 
demands of historical method. So long as these re- 
sults are made clear it is a matter of indifference 
what the peculiar form of the synthesis is. 

[150]' 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

The simplest and traditional form of synthesis, 
consisting of a full description of the institutions of a 
period and the public discontent to which they gave 
birth, followed by an account of the series of actions 
that reorganized society and a description of the new 
society, may not be the most effective form of presen- 
tation. A synthesis which associates the change (the 
action) with an account of the institution changed 
and the form into which it was changed has much 
more organic unity. Many of the older histories of 
the French revolution which began with a description 
of the abuses of the old society and of the birth of a 
critical public opinion failed to develop any organic 
connection between this first part of the synthesis 
and the revolutionary activity which followed; they 
omitted entirely any account of the transformed so- 
ciety which resulted from the revolutionary activity. 
In dealing with the church and the French revolution, 
for example, a full description of the old ecclesias- 
tical organization and of all the accompanying 
abuses is not essential to a general synthesis of the 
revolution, but only those parts need to be described 
which were affected by the revolution. 

A closer unity between the parts of the synthesis 
is secured if description and action are associated, 
description being introduced at the point where ac- 
tion is about to transform a condition. For example, 
an account of the French revolution might well reach 
the uprising of July, 1789, without making mention 
of feudal rights; the attack of the peasants on the 

[151] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

chateaux and the action of the assembly offer oppor- 
tunity for as much explanation, and in immediate 
connection with the act, as may be found necessary to 
understand the act and the characteristic features of 
the new condition created by the act. 

But whatever the form of synthesis used, the 
threefold aim should not be forgotten. No useless 
baggage should be taken aboard, no data should be 
included in the synthesis which do not show what 
the original conditions were, by what acts they were 
changed and what the changes were. Furthermore, 
there should be no missing links. That is, there 
should be no description of conditions unaffected by 
transforming acts, no acts without antecedents in 
conditions, and no changed conditions not accounted 
for by previous acts and conditions. 

A synthesis may be successful in showing fulness 
of series, causal connection and unique change and 
yet be badly proportioned, as a result of a failure to 
distinguish between important and unimportant fac- 
tors and events. Not that historical facts are big 
per se; they are important because of what they ac- 
complish and they are emphasized not by rhetorical 
flourish in the form of personal judgment, but by a 
detailed presentation which makes clear how they 
accomplished what they did accomplish. The detail 
with which an event or a topic is treated, the larger 
or smaller space devoted to it in the outline, is in- 
dicative, or should be indicative, of the importance 
attached to it by the historian. To give undue promi- 

[152] 



GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

nence to details, because they are curious or dra- 
matic, is to throw the picture out of perspective and 
is a mark of poor workmanship. 

Finally, some space in the outline should be de- 
voted to material introduced for the purpose of se- 
curing local color, of giving an air of verisimilitude 
to the reproduction of the past. How far this mate- 
rial should be employed cannot be determined by 
rule; it is a matter of good judgment and artistic 
taste. It must not be allowed to crowd out more im- 
portant details showing causal connection, nor can it 
be permitted to usurp the space which should be used 
to give emphasis to some important topic. The choice 
of the details to produce color is also a matter of 
taste. What is the effect one wishes to produce? 
What details may be used to produce that effect? 
How many of these details do we need to employ? 

In speaking of the opening of the states general 
of 1789 we might say: "The procession of the 
estates, which marked the opening of the states gen- 
eral, took place at Versailles on May 4, in the pres- 
ence of an enthusiastic throng of people." Here 
there is little for the imagination to work upon; 
characteristic details are necessary. They would con- 
sist of references ( 1 ) to the beauty of the day, (2) 
to the crowds filling the windows along the route 
of the procession — high price of seats — and even 
gathering on the housetops and peering from the 
chimney-pots; (3) to the houses hung with tapes- 
tries and the double lines of troops along the route 

[ 153 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

of the procession; (4) to the starting point and goal 
of the procession, the two churches of Notre-Dame 
and Saint-Louis; (5) to the order of the procession, 
headed by chanting monks, followed by the third 
estate (description of dress), the nobility (descrip- 
tion of dress) , the clergy (description of dress) , and 
the court, all carrying tapers; (6) to bands of music; 
(7) to the gaiety of the crowd and the reception of 
the king and queen and of the different orders and 
individuals. Many of these details, such as the treat- 
ment of the king and queen, of the Due d'Orleans, 
of the third estate by the crowd, the difference in 
dress, the attempts to impress upon the deputies of 
the third estate the fact that they occupied an in- 
ferior position in society, serve the double purpose 
of giving color and aiding in the development of 
causally connected series. Color may also be secured 
by the description of the physical setting of the event 
or by the use of contemporary illustrations. The 
Revolutions de Paris, for example, has an excellent 
series of contemporary woodcuts, dealing with the 
striking events of the revolution. 
f~ In its final form, the synthesis will appear as a de- 
tailed, well-organized outline, showing the results of 
the investigation as a unique, complex whole and in- 
dicating, after each detail in the outline, where the 
information was found that made possible the estab- 
lishment of that particular fact. This outline forms 
the skeleton, the bone and muscle, to be clothed with 
flesh and blood by the exposition or narrative^ 

[154] 



VIII 
EXPOSITION 

It is sometimes said that when the synthesis is com- 
pleted the exposition will offer little difficulty. I re- 
call making some such statement myself years ago in 
striving to impress upon my pupils the importance of 
a thoroughly prepared outline. I should have told 
them that if they had mastered their outline, had all 
the evidence in mind, could see the subject as a whole 
and the relative importance of the parts, if they had 
sufficient command of the English language to ex- 
press exactly what they had in mind, sufficient knowl- 
edge of the technique of rhetoric to present the sub- 
ject as a unit, the writing of the narrative would be, 
comparatively easy! A knowledge of historjsa'I 
method does not imply the possession of a large and 
varied vocabulary, or skill in the nice use of words, 
and without these the result of historical research 
cannot be adequately expressed. This condition is 
not peculiar to historical narration, but is common to 
all prose exposition. 

The necessity of adequate literary expression for 
the results of historical research in no wise justifies 
the assumption that history is literature or that the 
historical narrative is a failure if it is not a work of 



\ 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

art. The assumption is false and betrays a false con- 
ception of what should be required of an historical 
narrative. History certainly is not fiction and no 
amount of style can redeem a work that is not, true, 
that is, as true as it is possible to make it. The first 
question to be asked of every historical work is not 
Is it interesting and well written? hut Is it true? That 
the results of historical research should, if possible, 
have adequate literary expression goes without say- 
ing. For the historian, as for the literary artist, 
"structure is all-important . . . that architectural 
conception of work, which forsees the end in the be- 
ginning and never loses sight of it and in every part 
is conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does 
but, with undiminished vigor, unfold and justify the 
first." Both must insist on "unity" and "vital whole- 
ness," but that agreement does not make literature 
of history. 

An historical work is not a unique, detached thing, 
complete in itself, like a sonnet, a picture or a statue. 
It is part of a larger body of historical truth; it is 
attached to what has gone before and to what fol- 
lows it. The aim of the historian is not to arouse the 
emotions, but to convince the intellect of the truth of 
his exposition of some period of man's unique social 
evolution. If the final exposition of his work is dra- 
matic or has artistic unity, it is purely an accident. 
The historian does not search for dramatic episodes; 
his subject may not lend itself to dramatic treatment 
and if it should, in part, it is highly improbable that 

[156] 



EXPOSITION 



the source material would make possible the perfect 
execution of the conception. The work would remain 
a torso. 

The literary artist may draw upon his imagina- 
tion; the historian can draw only on his sources, and 
when the sources fail, his work is at an end. His use 
of the imagination is purely scientific; it helps him to 
revive what has existed, to visualize the facts estab- 
lished by the sources and to conceive the whole com- 
posed of the facts. An uncontrolled, subconscious 
imagination may make a good artist, but it makes a 
very poor historian. The work of the historian is 
not creative in the artistic sense. 

The false assumption that history is a branch of 
literature, that an historical narrative must be a work 
of art, has seriously hampered the progress of scien- 
tific historical work. It leaves the field open to a horde 
of amateurs whose only equipment is facility in writ- 
ing and encourages the pernicious inference that 
every history should be written for the general pub- 
lic. No amount of fine writing can give any value to 
an historical work that is not true. It is extraordi- 
nary that it should be necessary to insist upon this 
point; it should be self-evident. Who would think of 
saying of a work on chemistry or botany or physics, 
"I don't know how sound it is, but it is brilliantly 
written and interesting," and believe they were say- 
ing anything of fundamental importance concerning 
the scientific value of the work? What layman would 
even think of passing a judgment upon a scientific 

[157] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

work — a volume on natural science — or would think 
himself justified in complaining because it was not as 
interesting as a novel or as easily understood? 

What is the explanation of this difference in the 
attitude of the public toward natural and historical 
science? // is due to the absolute ignorance of the 
public of what historical science is or of the existence 
even of historical science. So long as it is assumed 
that anybody can write history and that anybody can 
teach history and in neither case any technical train- 
ing is looked upon as indispensable, just so long will 
the shelves of our libraries be crowded with so-called 
histories, unsound from cover to cover, showing 
nothing so clearly as the incompetence of the writer, 
and so long will the public go on estimating the value 
of an historical work by its style and attractiveness. 

Drive the "history fakir" from the field of histori- 
cal writing and the untrained history teacher from 
the schoolroom and the educated public of the next 
generation will take a different attitude toward his- 
torical work and have a better appreciation of the 
difficulties of historical research. Then it will be pos- 
sible for the public to understand that it is no more 
reasonable to expect that all historical work should 
be written for the general reader than that all works 
on natural science should be accessible to the same 
class of readers. 

Should there be, then, no popular histories, his- 
tories for general readers? Undoubtedly there 
should be such books, free from footnotes, bibliog- 

[158] 



EXPOSITION 



raphies and all scientific apparatus, but containing 
the truth of the latest investigations upon the topic 
treated. There is no more justification for an untrue 
popular history than for an untrue scientific history. 
No man is forced to become an interpreter to the pub- 
lic of what scientific historians have written; no man 
is justified in undertaking to play the role unless he is 
something more than a ready writer; he must know 
his subject and know it as the scholar knows it. The 
ideal condition would be to have the scientific and 
popular histories written by the same man; first the 
careful investigation of the subject and a scientific 
exposition of the results for the benefit of scholars 
and then a popular presentation of the same matter 
for the general public. 

One thing, above all others, should be clear; the 
scholar should never attempt to reach both audiences 
in the same book; his scientific work is bound to suf- 
fer. A distinguished German historian of the last 
generation published a volume embodying the results 
of long years of research; the footnotes were rele- 
gated to the back of the book. "I want readers," was 
the excuse that he gave. Others have gone farther 
and entirely eliminated all footnotes, all proof of the 
truth of the statements made in the text. 

What could be more unscholarly, more lacking in 
appreciation of the conditions of progress in histori- 
cal knowledge? How can an exposition of that char- 
acter extend the bounds of demonstrated historical 
truth? The reader asks: "What evidence did the his- 

[159] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

torian have before him? how exhaustive was his re- 
search? how critically did he use his material?" How 
is it possible to answer these questions, if the narra- 
tive is not accompanied, step by step, by the evidence? 
What help can such an exposition be to the later in- 
vestigator of the same period? How can he tell what 
was well and finally done and what remains to be 
done ? Only by going over the entire field again. To 
present the results of long years of scientific research 
in unscientific form is but to waste the time of the in- 
vestigator and the time of those who come after him. 
And what is gained by it? Nothing. The reader who 
would be frightened from a page because he is con- 
fronted by footnotes is too much of an intellectual 
weakling to deserve serious consideration. The duty 
of the scientist is first of all to his science. The results 
of scientific research must be formulated scientifically 
and that can he done only by the investigator. The 
popular exposition may be prepared by another, if 
the investigator is unable to undertake it. 

We are not concerned, then, as scholars, with a 
popular history for general readers, but with the ex- 
position of the results of scholarly historical re- 
search. It should be the work of a scholar done for 
scholars. Such an exposition consists of ( i ) a prose 
narrative, (2) footnotes and (3) appendixes con- 
sisting of bibliographies, documents and critical dis- 
cussions. Let us consider the nature of each in turn. 

What should be the characteristics of the narra- 
tive? First of all it should possess "vital wholeness." 

[160] 



EXPOSITION 



How can that be secured? One would think it only 
necessary to piece together the items of the outline, 
thus creating the whole of which they are the parts. 
Unfortunately this is not true. To present the inci- 
dents of the outline, one after the other, without con- 
necting or explanatory matter will either lead to the 
swamping of the reader in a mass of details or will 
force him to work out the connections for himself. 
The narrative consists of the outline plus the con- 
necting tissue, the explanation which enables the 
reader to grasp the organization, the unity underly- 
ing the text. The reader has not examined the 
sources, he has not accompanied the historian in the 
work of construction; he does not have the detailed 
outline before him, and yet the historian wishes to 
convey to his mind the general view of the subject 
that has taken shape in his own mind as the result of 
his investigations. 

To make clear the unity he has discovered in the 
mass of details, the historian must begin with the 
whole. He must sketch its limits, its general outline 
and characteristics, and then, descending to the parts 
of the whole, he must reveal the individuality of each 
while describing the facts which constitute it. As he 
advances step by step, he must help the reader to 
hold in mind what has been presented and to note 
the direction in which he is moving. Two indispen- 
sable conditions of success in conveying the idea of 
unity in the work are for the historian to see it him- 
self and to be able to estimate the value of his expo- 

[161] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

sition as a complete and correct expression of the 
whole he has in mind. 

The conception of the subject as a whole calls for 
the use of the constructive imagination. One must 
not only keep the whole subject in mind, while the 
synthesis is taking shape, but long hours of study 
must be given to the completed outline before the 
work of exposition begins and the outline must be 
constantly before the student's eyes while the ex- 
position is in progress. The young student must rid 
himself of the idea that the outline is something ex- 
traneous and not at all indispensable; that it is simply 
an additional burden inflicted on him by the instruc- 
tor. It is the only means of effectively organizing the 
results of historical study — or of any other study, 
for that matter — and without this skeleton to work 
upon, the imagination may labor in vain. 

How much unity the imagination may see in the 
facts depends upon the imagination. That the imagi- 
nation may be trained is doubtless true, but no 
amount of industry or critical skill in establishing the 
facts can take the place of the scientific imagination 
in fusing these facts into a whole. This part of the 
historian's work must depend largely upon genius, 
and genius cannot be taught. 

Polybius, profoundly impressed by the dominating 
position of Rome in the Mediterranean basin, as he 
saw it with his own eyes, asked himself how it had 
been attained. The answer to that question, given 
by his constructive imagination, was the most impor- 

[162] 



EXPOSITION 



tant work of historical exposition produced by an- 
tiquity. Bryce, dwelling upon facts long known and 
often narrated, saw a vision of the Holy Roman Em- 
pire which gave unity to a thousand years of Euro- 
pean history. 

Gibbon had a vision that supplemented the vision 
of Polybius and described The Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire, while Thierry, in his Tableau 
de V empire romain, described as a whole the two 
phases of Rome's work which had been treated sep- 
arately by Polybius and Gibbon. 

These are a few, well-known examples of the 
work of the constructive historical imagination. 
Everywhere opportunities are offered for synthesis 
quite as valuable as these, and contributions, on a 
large or a small scale, to an understanding of the 
unity of history, in part or as a whole, are made each 
year. It is this side of exposition, no doubt, that has 
led to the classification of history as literature and it 
is the fascination attaching to the exposition of large 
and significant wholes which has attracted the writer 
without historical training into the historical field. 
It must never be forgotten, however, that these bril- 
liant syntheses are valuable only in so far as they 
take deep root in the critical results of historical in- 
vestigation and stand the test, in every part, of se- 
vere historical criticism. 

The ability to visualize the subject as a whole is 
not the sole condition of a successful exposition ; one 
must be able to criticise his own narrative, to note 

[163] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

whether it really reflects the vision of unity, thus 
making it possible for the reader to see the subject 
as the investigator has seen it. The most practical 
way to get a detached point of view is to lay the first 
draft aside and return to it after it has "become 
cold." Some approach can be made then to looking 
at it from the point of view of the uninformed reader 
and many gaps and obscurities will appear that es- 
caped notice in the heat of the original construction. 
More apergus to enable the reader to grasp the unity 
of a group of facts, more connecting observations to 
enable him to seize the relation between groups, 
more details to make clear and to demonstrate the 
truth of an aperqu, may be found necessary as the re- 
result of the rereading of the narrative. 

Space will not allow the presentation of specific 
illustrations of the manner in which the exposition 
may present the subject as a unit. By studying the 
narratives of historians who have been markedly suc- 
cessful in this part of the work of reconstruction, 
one may learn what their technique was. Their 
methods should not, however, be copied; and after 
one has made a conscious study of them, he still must 
learn by writing himself. The difficulty of teaching 
this part of exposition is due to the fact that every 
exposition is unique and success or failure will depend 
upon individual genius. 

The problem of unity is not the only one which 
presses upon the historian who is attempting to give 
form to the results of his investigation. From the be- 

[i6 4 ] 



EXPOSITION 



ginning to the end of his narrative he must never lose 
sight of the fact that he is not speaking with author- 
ity, but simply stating what he believes to be true 
from the study of the evidence. It is his business to 
make clear to the reader just what the condition of 
the evidence is; whether the statement made in the 
text is a fact, a probability or the affirmation of a 
single witness. He is bound to call attention to gaps 
in the evidence, to an ignorance that cannot be dissi- 
pated, to problems that need to be solved and possi- 
ble ways of solving them. These demands made upon 
the exposition call for slow and wary walking. 

It is so easy to make sweeping statements, nearly 
true, but not quite true; so difficult to hew to the 
line, neither overstating nor understating, telling 
neither more nor less than one is justified in telling 
from the evidence in hand. This critical restraint fre- 
quently brings the narrative to a halt with the dis- 
covery of a fresh bit of evidence or with the reali- 
zation that more evidence ought to be and probably 
can be found; it even leads to the recasting of por- 
tions of the narrative when the development of later 
portions places the earlier portions in a new light. 
The willingness to submit to this sort of discipline, 
to meet all these requirements of ideal achievement, 
are the supreme test of the presence of the scientific 
spirit in the investigator. In many cases it may be 
almost an affair of conscience, as nobody may dis- 
cover some slight defect, if the investigator allows it 
to pass uncorrected. 

[165] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

The narrative should reflect the character of the 
evidence. When the matter presented is a fact, sup- 
ported by the agreement of independent witnesses, 
it is stated as a fact. For example, in speaking of the 
calling of the states general of 1789, if we wrote, 
"The opposition of the parlements forced Louis 
XVI to summon the states general," the inference 
would be that the statement rests upon the agree- 
ment of the affirmations of independent witnesses. 
If, on the other hand, we wrote, "It seems probable 
that the opposition of the parlements forced Louis 
XVI to call the states general," the critical reader 
understands that he is not getting a fact, that the 
affirmations conflict, but that the weight of the testi- 
mony seems to favor the statement made. There 
might be a third case in which one would write, 
"Sallier states that the opposition of the parlements 
forced Louis XVI to call the states general," and the 
reader would understand that Sallier was the only 
source. Finally, we might say, "There was a rumor," 
or "it was generally believed, that the opposition of 
the parlements forced Louis XVI to call the states 
general," and it would be understood from the form 
of the statement that the evidence is of very slight 
value. 

It ought to be clear that such a demand for scien- 
tific accuracy in a narrative can be met only by one 
who has made an exhaustive search for sources, has 
criticised them carefully and has in mind the entire 
result of that work. Each statement demands the re- 

[166] 



EXPOSITION 



call of all the evidence and its character. At this point, 
an historical exposition has nothing in common with 
a piece of pure literature. The desire to get the proof 
before the reader will frequently lead to the intro- 
duction of documents and source extracts into the 
text, interrupting the flow of the exposition. This 
sort of practice shocks the litterateur, who prefers to 
substitute his own paraphrase for the words of the 
source ; to the serious searcher for truth, the evidence 
incorporated in its original form in the text is as wel- 
come as water to a thirsty land. 

Whenever space permits, source material should 
be incorporated in the text. A paraphrase of a 
source never has the color of the source itself and 
there is, furthermore, the possibility of error in con- 
densing. A standard work on European diplomacy 
states that the French legislative assembly of 1792 
voted to declare war on ''Austria and the empire"; 
the text of the declaration states that it was declared 
upon "the King of Bohemia and Hungary." A quo- 
tation of the text of the source would have taken no 
more space than the false statement. 

A narrative cannot, of course, consist of nothing 
but a collection of source extracts; good judgment is 
needed to decide what extracts are important enough 
to use and how much of each shall be used. The prac- 
tice of weaving sources into the text does not owe its 
origin to the fact that such a method of construction 
is easier, calls for less skill in execution than the 
method of free-flowing narrative which preceded it; 

[167] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

the introduction of evidence in the text is one of 
the signs of the divorce of history from pure litera- 
ture and a result of the demand for proof on the part 
of the reader. The opposition to the method is no 
better grounded than the opposition to footnotes. 
Once concede the necessity of demonstrating the 
truth of the facts composing an historical narrative 
and one is debarred from objecting to the use of 
source extracts in the text and of notes at the bottom 
of the page. 

The footnotes should form an integral part of the 
exposition and offer a sufficient means of controlling 
the truth of the narrative. One writes more cau- 
tiously when one is obliged to cite proof for every 
statement in the text. The following paragraph, 
hardly a word of which is true, would never have 
been written had the writer been obliged to cite his 
evidence : 

"During the applause that followed Necker's ad- 
dress [on May 5, 1789] . . . the king hastily with- 
drew from the hall, having been warned that Mira- 
beau was to make himself 'the mouthpiece of the 
nation's wishes.' The nobility and the clergy immedi- 
ately followed the king and the deputies of the third 
estate were left alone in that vast hall. Without lead- 
ership or organization, the deputies lingered around 
for awhile and then gradually melted away." 

All of this misstatement and confusion is due to 
careless and superficial study. The general public 
alone suffers from such an exposition; it is not in a 

[168] 



EXPOSITION 



position to test the truth of the narrative. The stu- 
dent of the French revolution who is even fairly well 
acquainted with the sources, recognizes at once what 
he has before him in the paragraph quoted. The gen- 
eral character of the whole volume is one of inac- 
curacy, and even if the student is not familiar with 
the evidence touching the Mirabeau incident, but 
knows what the biographers have written about it, he 
would not be inclined ]to believe that this writer, who 
cites no evidence, had found any unknown to the 
earlier and more scholarly biographers. 

But suppose the passage for which no evidence 
was cited came from a monographic study by a dis- 
tinguished historian, published in one of the leading 
historical reviews ; suppose that for other statements 
in the monograph sources are cited in abundance in 
footnotes and even hitherto unpublished manuscript 
material is added in an appendix. Under those cir- 
cumstances would one not be likely to infer that 
everything for which evidence was not cited was so 
well known that citation of evidence seemed super- 
fluous? The inference would not be justified. 

In an article on "The Second Ministry of Necker" 
in the Revue his torique of May-June, 1891, referring 
to the royal session of June 23, M. Flammermont 
wrote: "Tuesday the 23 at eleven o'clock, the king 
went with great pomp from the chateau to the hall 
of the estates . . . Not a single cry was raised to 
a'cclaim him." Two sentences and two inaccurate 
statements: The session was over at eleven o'clock, 

[169] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

beginning at half past ten. Camille Desmoulins, who 
stood outside the hall, wrote to his father the next 
day: "The king came. As M. Necker did not pre- 
cede him, we were in consternation. A handful of 
paid children ran beside the carriage crying, 'Long 
live the king.' Some valets, some spies joined in the 
chorus; all respectable people and the crowd re- 
mained silent." 

How could a scholar as critical as M. Flammer- 
mont blunder in this way? On this occasion, M. 
Flammermont doubtless got his information second- 
hand and was betrayed by the secondary writer. His 
failure to examine the sources carefully for the 
royal session was doubtless due to the fact that he 
was dealing with Necker, and Necker did not ap- 
pear at the session. Possibly he used Michelet, 
who wrote that "even on leaving the chateau, the 
king encountered a mournfully silent crowd," and 
cites Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, as his source. 
Dumont, who was an eyewitness, declared that the 
king received "no applause from the people, not a 
vive le roi," on leaving the chateau. This may have 
been true, but Dumont wrote ten years after the 
event and had had a good chance to forget. More- 
over, what he says about the occurrences at the 
chateau does not apply to the whole route from the 
chateau to the hall. 

The hour of opening an assembly, the cries that 
did or did not greet a king, are but minor details, 
and yet if they are of sufficient importance to form 

[ 170] 



EXPOSITION 



part of a narrative, we should know what the evi- 
dence is that justifies us in using them as facts. The 
insistence upon proof for everything will eliminate 
carelessness even in details. And if the rule of proof 
for all statements is not to apply, where shall the 
line be drawn? When is a detail so unimportant that 
the writer may assert it without having proved it? 
Is it safe under any circumstances to allow the au- 
thority of the writer to usurp the place of the au- 
thority of the evidence? There is no authority but 
the evidence, and the only proof of the scientific good 
faith of the historian is the citation of the evidence. 

There are three things that may be accomplished 
by footnotes : ( i ) The citation of volume and page, 
etc., indicating where the evidence is found; (2) the 
quotation of an extract from the source in the exact 
language of the source; and (3) the discussion of 
the evidence upon which some statement in the nar- 
rative is based. The third kind of a note is the least 
common and the most difficult to write. 

To write the first kind of a note, indicating where 
the source is to be found, should not be a difficult 
matter, but an examination of historical narratives 
would seem to indicate that it is more difficult than 
it appears. What is the object of such a note? Obvi- 
ously to enable the reader to find the evidence upon 
which a statement rests, thus making it possible for 
him to decide whether the historian was justified in 
making the statement. The most common reference 
is to volume and page. Here trouble arises for the 

[ 171 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

reader, if the writer fails to mention the volume, or, 
if there are several editions of the work, fails to 
mention the edition used. This latter blunder may 
make it difficult, sometimes impossible, to find the 
reference. At times, the volume referred to is rare 
and it is desirable to refer to the library in which it 
is found and the library number. 

The material used may be manuscript and in such 
a case the archives or private collection in which it 
is found should be indicated and the number of the 
folio, dossier, or carton should be given, together 
with the numbering of the particular document. The 
reference should be exact enough so that a student 
on entering the archives could make out his slip and 
receive the material at once. For a writer to quote 
the text of an important document and in his foot- 
note to refer, for example, to the Archives natio- 
nals is irritating beyond words. How, with no more 
definite reference than this, can this manuscript be 
found among the hundreds of thousands of manu- 
scripts making up this great collection? And yet it 
would have been easy to give the exact reference, 
for the writer was obliged to use it in order to gain 
access to the document. 

If the monograph is accompained by a critical 
bibliography, as it should be, giving the full title of 
the work and indicating where it is found, it is not 
necessary to repeat the whole of the title in each foot- 
note. In a study on the French revolution, for ex- 
ample, if but one of the works of Necker is used and 

[ 172] 



EXPOSITION 



the title of this is given in full in the bibliography, 
in the footnotes it may be referred to simply, as 
Necker, — (volume), — (page). No genius is re- 
quired to write correct notes of this kind; only 
careful, patient work is necessary. The notes should 
be correct and definite, if they are to be of any use; 
and if they are not intended for use, it would be bet- 
ter to omit them. 

The second kind of note, that containing a quo- 
tation, also contains the reference to the source. The 
purpose of this note is to put the exact text of the 
source before the reader to enable him to judge of 
the correctness of the inferences drawn from it by 
the writer. In a scientific work, it should not be a 
translation, but the source in the original language 
in which it was recorded, Latin, Greek, French, Ger- 
man, Italian, Spanish, or whatever it may have been. 
To offer a translation instead of the original text is 
to leave an element of uncertainty concerning the 
truth, as the translation may not be exact. Here, 
again, a correct reproduction of the text is the essen- 
tial thing and can be accomplished only by one who 
has a working knowledge of the language. 

As a rule, quotations should be made in a note 
only when the work cited is a rare one or in manu- 
script form and hence inaccessible to any considera- 
ble body of readers, or when it is necessary for the 
reader to have the text under his eye in order to un- 
derstand the narrative. The problem of when to in- 
troduce the text into the narrative in the form of a 

[ 173] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

translation, if the original is in a foreign language, 
and when to give it untranslated in a note is a matter 
which cannot be settled by rule. If the demonstration 
turns on the exact language of the source, that should 
be reproduced in a note in the original language, es- 
pecially if there is any doubt as to what the language 
means. In the majority of cases it probably would be 
better to incorporate the quotation in the text. 

The last form of footnote, and the most difficult 
to write, is the critical note. When a statement made 
in the text is not certain but probable, it is essential 
that the reader should know not only what the evi- 
dence is upon which the statement rests, but also 
what considerations have led the historian to accept 
one probability rather than another. 

For example, in dealing with the fall of Robes- 
pierre, some historians are convinced that he at- 
tempted to commit suicide on the morning of the 
ioth of Thermidor, others believe that he was shot 
by Meda, while others are unable to reach any con- 
clusion as to the cause of his wound. That he was 
shot, is certain; who shot him, up to the present 
time, remains an unsolved problem. In a scientific his- 
tory of the revolution, a statement that "Robes- 
pierre attempted to commit suicide by shooting him- 
self with a pistol, the muzzle of which he placed in 
his mouth," or that "Robespierre was wounded by 
the gendarme Meda," or that "it is uncertain 
whether Robespierre wounded himself or was shot 
by Meda," should be accompanied by a full critical 

[ 174] 



EXPOSITION 



note of explanation. The note should enumerate the 
evidence, state the value of it, interpret the affirma- 
tions of the witnesses, compare them to determine 
what the fact is and supplement or control the testi- 
mony of the direct witnesses by constructive reason- 
ing. The difficulty of this problem is due to the fact 
that of the witnesses who knew something about the 
shooting — Robespierre and Meda — only Meda tes- 
tified, and when he testified Robespierre was not 
alive to contradict him. 

In his short history of the French revolution 
Belloc wrote: "As he [Robespierre] sat there with 
the paper before him and his signature still un- 
finished, the armed force of the Parliament burst 
into the room, a lad of the name of Meda aimed a 
pistol from the door at Robespierre and shot him in 
the jaw. [The evidence in favor of this version is 
conclusive.]" In this work, Belloc gives no evidence, 
but in his life of Robespierre he devotes a note of 
three pages to a discussion of the evidence. After set- 
ting forth some of the statements of contemporaries 
on either side, he concludes that they contradict each 
other and that the solution of the problem must be 
found in the interpretation of the report of the sur- 
geons who examined Robespierre's wound. The 
wound as they describe it, in the left cheek, could not 
have been made by a man holding a pistol in his right 
hand, according to Belloc. Hence Meda must have 
shot Robespierre. 

In writing a history of this episode one might say: 

[ 175 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

"In the early morning of the ioth of Thermidor, 
when the troops of the .convention entered the city 
hall, and when his companions were either taking 
their lives or endeavoring to escape, it seems highly 
probable that Robespierre attempted to commit sui- 
cide by shooting himself with a pistol the muzzle of 
which was placed in his mouth. He did not kill him- 
self; the bullet shattered his left jaw and passed out 
through the left cheek, narrowly missing the con- 
cierge who was passing. The invaders found Robes- 
pierre stretched on the floor bleeding from his 
wound. One of the first to enter was a gendarme, 
Meda by name, who claimed later that he found 
Robespierre seated at a table, that he had words 
with him and that he finally shot him at close range. 
This statement, in conflict with all the other evidence, 
must be dismissed as false." 

The proof of these statements might then be given 
in the following note: There is nothing to confirm 
the testimony of Meda that he shot Robespierre. Ac- 
cording to his account (Collection des memoires rela- 
tifs a la revolution francaise. Camille Desmoulins, 
Vilate et Meda. Paris, 1825, page 384), as he en- 
tered a room in the city hall, he saw some fifty men 
very much agitated. u In the midst of them, I recog- 
nized the elder Robespierre. He was seated in a 
chair, his left elbow on his knees, his head supported 
on his left hand. I sprang at him and presenting the 
point of my saber at his breast said, 'Surrender, trai- 
tor!' He raised his head and said to me, 'It is you 

[176] 



EXPOSITION 



who are the traitor and I am going to have you shot.' 
At these words, I seized one of my pistols with my 
left hand and making a turn to the right, I fired at 
him. I intended to shoot him in the breast, but the 
ball struck him on the chin and broke his lower jaw; 
he fell from his chair.' An examination of the evi- 
dence that follows will make clear the ridiculous in- 
consistencies of this account. 

I have met with one contemporary record which 
states that "Robespierre shot himself in the mouth 
with a pistol and at the same time was shot by a 
gendarme." This statement was made in the con- 
vention on the 1 6th of Thermidor by a member of 
the section of Gravilliers who was with the invading 
troops and was an eyewitness (Moniteur, XXI, 385. 
Quoted by Aulard, Etudes et lecons, Paris, 1893, 
285). The same witness states that as the troops en- 
tered the city hall "a citizen who marched by the 
side of Leonard Bourdon [the leader] fell under 
the body of the younger Robespierre who had 
thrown himself from a window." In other words, be- 
fore the elder Robespierre shot himself, his brother 
had sought to escape by jumping from the window. 

The employees in the record office of the city hall 
published an account of Robespierre's end in the 
Journal de Perlet of the 24th of Thermidor (Aulard, 
Etudes et lecons, Paris, 1893, 285) . It describes first 
the reading of the decree of the convention outlaw- 
ing Robespierre and his associates. The document 

[ 177 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

was read and commented on by the mayor. "Then 
followed a period of silence broken by a pistol-shot 
in the passage-way between the hall of the council 
and that of the general assembly. The mayor left his 
seat and ran to the place from which the shot seemed 
to come. He came back at once, pale and trembling, 
and on all sides the cry was heard, 'Robespierre has 
blown out his brains V " 

The concierge, Michel Brochard, stated (Aulard, 
Etudes et leqons, Paris, 1893, 286) : "The elder 
Robespierre shot himself with a pistol, the ball of 
which, missing him, came within three inches of hit- 
ting me. I came near being killed by it, as Robes- 
pierre fell upon me on leaving the hall of Egalite by 
the passage." 

According to Leonard Gallois, a contemporary 
who gathered the oral tradition (Aulard, Etudes et 
leqons , Paris, 1893, 287), "the opinion of all the old 
friends of Robespierre, of his sisters and of his con- 
temporaries is that he shot himself with a pistol and 
broke his jaw. The wound proves convincingly that 
he put the muzzle of the pistol into his mouth." 

Barere, in his report to the convention on the 
morning of the 10th of Thermidor said "Robes- 
pierre shot himself" (Aulard, Etudes et leqons ,Parls, 
1893, 287). Dulac, an employee of the Committee 
of Public Safety, testified a year later (Aulard, 
Etudes et leqons, Paris, 1893, 286) : "I found him 
[Robespierre] stretched out near a table, suffering 

[178] 



EXPOSITION 



from a pistol wound, the ball having entered an inch 
and a half below the lower lip and passed out below 
the left cheek-bone." 

Finally, we have the report of the surgeons who 
examined the wound at five o'clock on the morning 
of the ioth of Thermidor (Histoire parlementaire, 
XXXIV, 90) : "We noticed first of all," runs the 
record, "that the entire face was swollen, more pro- 
nounced on the left; there was also an erosion of the 
skin and ecchymosis of the eye on the same side. The 
pistol had been discharged on a level with the mouth, 
an inch from the commissure of the lips. As its direc- 
tion [the direction of the ball] was oblique from out- 
side in, from left to right, from above down, and as 
the wound penetrated the mouth, it affected exter- 
nally the skin, the cellular tissue, the triangular mus- 
cles, buccinateur, etc. On introducing the finger into 
the mouth, we found a fracture with splinters at the 
angle of the lower jaw and we drew out two canine 
teeth, a first molar and some pieces of bone from 
this angle ; but it was impossible for us to follow the 
course of the bullet and we found no counter-opening 
and no trace of the ball." The surgeons remark on 
"the smallness of the wound." 

Setting aside the inference that the bullet entered 
from the outside and followed a downward course 
from left to right, — for this is nothing but inference, 
— would it be possible to imagine a report that could 
give stronger support to the contemporary belief 
that Robespierre had shot himself by placing the 

[ 179 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

muzzle of a pistol in his mouth? Could the state of 
things described by the surgeons be produced in any- 
other way? If a pistol, held in the right hand, were 
discharged into the mouth would it not have broken 
the jaw bone on the left side, knocked out teeth, 
caused a swelling of the left side of the face, and 
could not the bullet have passed out through the 
cheek, making a small hole? Discard the assertion of 
Meda and all the evidence falls into place, even in- 
cluding the statement of the concierge that the bullet 
from Robespierre's pistol narrowly missed him. 

And why should Robespierre not have tried to 
take his life? He had been outlawed; he had begun 
to sign his name to an insurrectionary and illegal 
document (see the facsimile of the original in the 
Memoires de Barras, 4 vols., Paris, 1895, I, op- 
posite page 194) ; the militia that had gathered in 
the square before the city hall had dispersed, the 
building was surrounded and being invaded by the 
troops of the convention. His friends were either try- 
ing to escape or committing suicide; if he did not 
take his own life, he would certainly be arrested and 
guillotined without trial. Why should he have hesi- 
tated? 

All the evidence bearing on the event and the en- 
tire setting of it is of such a character that there is 
much ground for wonder that the statement of the 
gendarme Meda should ever have had any impor- 
tance attached to it. He may have fired at Robes- 
pierre, he may have believed that he wounded him, 

[180] 



EXPOSITION 



but he certainly did not make the wound described by 
the surgeons, and there was no other. That Robes- 
pierre shot himself is highly probable. 

If the problem of the attempted suicide of Robes- 
pierre were treated as the subject of a monograph 
instead of an episode in a history of the revolution, 
the matter relegated to a note in the general work 
might all be incorporated in the text. In either case, 
it is difficult to draw with precision the line between 
what should go into the text and what into the note. 
The rule is to state in the text the conclusions reached 
from a study of the evidence and to explain in the 
text how those results were reached. If now and then 
some of the proof slips into the text it need not be 
looked upon as an unpardonable offence against the 
canons of historical exposition. 

The exposition of the results of historical research 
should always be supplemented by a critical bibli- 
ography and at times appendixes may be necessary. 
A critical bibliography should consist of a complete 
list of all the material, sources and secondary, used 
in the preparation of the history. The list of secon- 
dary works should not consist of all that has been 
written on the subject, but only such as still have 
scientific value. It should include articles in reviews 
as well as larger histories and monographs. The 
works should be arranged alphabetically, according 
to the authors' names. To give the bibliography a 
critical character, a note should be added to each 
title indicating the nature and value of the work. The 

[181] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

titles should be given in full, with the name of au- 
thor, including initials, the title of the work, number 
of volumes, edition, place and date of publication. 
All of these details are indispensable. 

The sources should be presented apart from the 
secondary works and divided into groups containing 
the printed and the manuscript material. In each 
group, the matter should be arranged systematically 
and alphabetically so that any material looked for 
may be found easily. The printed sources can be 
naturally arranged under such heads as "Official 
Documents," "Correspondence," "Newspapers," 
"Memoires" etc., and under these subdivisions, al- 
phabetically according to authors, titles of newspa- 
pers, collections of documents, etc. In the division 
devoted to manuscript sources, the usual practice is 
to arrange the material according to the archives, 
and under the archives according to the title of the 
document. The full title of each document and the 
exact indication of where it is found in the archives 
should be given. 

With each group of material should go a critical 
note indicating what the material is and what its 
value is. The purpose of these critical notes, whether 
given in the body of the work, in the bibliography or 
in an appendix, is to acquaint the student with the 
results of the historian's critical investigations. For 
example, some sources, hitherto anonymous, un- 
dated, or considered independent have been local- 
ized. There is no place in the text for the proof of 

[182] 



EXPOSITION 



the work and yet it is quite as important that it 
should be made public and preserved as that the 
facts should be narrated. If the matter is brief, some 
of it may go into notes in the body of the book ; much 
of it may be included in the bibliograhy; sometimes, 
if the study is a long one, it may be relegated to an 
appendix. This bibliographical work should be done 
with great care that it may be utilized readily and 
confidently. 

The appendix is the place for unpublished sources, 
if it seems desirable to make them accessible to the 
reader, for maps, diagrams, tables and long critical 
studies dealing with such questions as genuineness, 
authorship, time and place of writing and independ- 
ence of sources. A source, published in an appendix, 
should be reproduced in the original language, al- 
though not necessarily in the original orthography. 
The practice today is to modernize capitalization, 
spelling and punctuation, unless the text should hap- 
pen to have some philological value, when, of course, 
the original form should be retained. The source 
should be accompanied with an indication of its prov- 
enance, critical notes on its value and any explana- 
tions that may be helpful in utilizing it. 

We have traversed the long and difficult road 
from the choice of a subject to the editing of a docu- 
ment for an appendix; it is the road every student of 
history must traverse who would know how the past 
is restored from a critical study of the documents. 
To become familiar, the road must be travelled 

[183] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

many times. Although the technique of historical 
method is not to be mastered for the mere purpose 
of mastering it, but that it may be used in the search 
for historical truth, yet, as in any other subject, the 
mastery of the technique is the indispensable con- 
dition of successful work. Naturally, what has been 
presented here is but an elementary sketch intended 
to serve only as an introduction to historical work, 
to help the student through his first attempt at re- 
search. 

I have attempted to make clear the difference be- 
tween the method of history and that of natural 
science, and to justify the claim that some knowledge 
of historical method should form a part of the train- 
ing of every educated man and woman, while a con- 
siderable acquaintance with the method should be 
required of every teacher of history. I have sought 
to demonstrate the necessity of developing the his- 
torical consciousness by the teaching of history in the 
schools and of supplying a sound base for such in- 
struction through scientific historical study. Finally, 
I have hoped to awaken in a few the laudable am- 
bition to contribute something to the exact knowl- 
edge of man's past life in society through acquaint- 
ance with the methods of historical research and 
their conscious and careful application. If the book 
accomplishes one or more of these things, it will 
serve a good purpose. 



[i8 4 ] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 
INTRODUCTION 

A. Works on Historical Method. 

Bernheim, Ernst. Lehrbuch der historischen Methode. 

Sixth edition. Leipzig, 1908. 
Freeman, E. A. The Methods of Historical Study. 

London, 1886. 
Langlois, Ch. V. et Seignobos, Ch. Introduction aux etudes 

historiques. Paris, 1898. English translation by G. B. 

Berry (Holt & Co., 1898) now out of print. 
Vincent, John Martin. Historical Research. New York, 

1911. 
Bernheim's volume is the standard textbook on historical 
method, having no rival in any language. It deals with all 
phases of method from the definition of history to the phi- 
losophy of history. Each chapter is accompanied by a de- 
tailed bibliography embracing everything of importance 
that has been published on the topic. For the advanced 
student, nothing can take the place of Bernheim. It is not 
a work to be read once and laid aside, but an encyclopedia 
of method to be kept on the work table. 

It is unnecessary to enumerate all the introductions to 
historical method that have been published. Of the works 
that have appeared in English, Freeman's volume is un- 
systematic and incomplete. It is interesting because of the 
element of personal experience it contains, but should not 
be recommended to beginners as a guide. The work of 

[185] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

Langlois and Seignobos and that of Vincent were intended 
to serve that purpose. The first volume was the outcome 
of a series of lectures delivered to beginning students at 
the Sorbonne; Professor Vincent's attractive volume, in- 
tended "for the advanced student who is about to enter 
the field of research, either as a profession or as a serious 
avocation," stresses mediaeval history and will be helpful 
as an introduction to students intending to specialize in 
that field. 

B. Works on the Logic of History. 

Adler, Max. Kausalitat und Teleologie im Streite um die 

Wissenschaft. Wien, 1904. 
Croce, Benedetto. 77 concetto della storia nelle sue rela- 

zioni col concetto dell' arte. Second edition, Roma, 

1896. l 
Droysen, J. G. Principles of History. Translated by E. B. 

Andrews. Boston, 1893. 
Fling, F. M. "Historical Synthesis," American Historical 

Review, Vol. ix, No. 1, October, 1903. 
Gottl, F. Die Grenzen der Geschichte. Leipzig, 1904. 
Hobhouse, L. T. Development and Purpose. London, 

1913. 
Hughes, Percy. "The Concept Action in History and in 

the Natural Sciences," Columbia University Contri- 
butions to Philosophy, Psychology, and Education, 

Vol. x, No. 3. 
Kistiakowski, Th. Gesellschaft und Einzelwesen. Berlin, 

1899. 
Lacombe, P. De Yhistoire consideree comme science. Paris, 

1894. 
Lamprecht, Karl. Die kulturhistorische Methode. Berlin, 

1900. 

[186] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Lask, Emil. Fichte's Idealismus und die Geschichte. 

Leipzig, 1902. 
Medicus, Fritz. "Kant und Ranke," Kantstudien, Band 

viii, Heft 2-3, Berlin, 1903. 
Miinsterberg, H. Psychology and Life (1899), chapter v, 

"Psychology and History." 
Miinsterberg, H. Philosophie der Werthe. Leipzig, 1908. 
Naville, Adrien. Nouvelle classification des sciences. 

Second edition. Paris, 1901. 
Rickert, Heinrich. Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaft- 

lichen Be griff sbildung. Leipzig, 1902. Second edition, 

1913. 
Robinson, J. H. The New History. New York, 1912. 
Show, A. B. "The New Culture- History in Germany," 

The History Teacher s Magazine, October, 1913. 
Windelband, Wilhelm. Geschichte und Naturwissen- 

schaft. Strassburg, 1900. 
Xenopol, A. D. Les principes fondamentaux de I'histoire. 

Paris, 1899. 
Xenopol, A. D. "Natur und Geschichte," Historische 

Zeitschrift, 113 Band, 1 Heft. 
The list of titles given above does not constitute an ex- 
haustive bibliography of the growing literature on the 
logic of history. It is, however, representative and will 
enable the student to get fully oriented on the subject. 

Naville's little volume may serve as an introduction, 
giving the position of history among the sciences as a whole. 
My article on "Historical Synthesis" traces briefly the his- 
tory of the debate between history and natural science 
from Buckle to the present time. The attempt to make a 
natural science of history has failed. 

The theory of Lamprecht, the last protagonist of the 
application of the method of natural science to history, is 

[187] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

presented in his Kulturhistorische Methode; a criticism of 
the theory will be found in the article by Professor Show. 

Windelband's address on Geschichte und Naturwissen- 
schaft is an excellent summary of the logic of history as 
distinguished from that of natural science. The great work 
on the logic of history is Rickert's Grenzen. For the 
specialist in history it should be a companion volume to 
Bernheim's Lehrbuch and should be worked over as care- 
fully. 

Droysen's Principles may be read with profit after 
Rickert has cleared the way. The forerunner of Windel- 
band and Rickert was Fichte, and Lask's study makes clear 
how important a part he had in the evolution of the logic 
of history, "the logic of the irrational." 

Besides Lamprecht, Lacombe may serve as a type of the 
sociologist who cannot understand that the end aimed at 
determines the method to be employed; he, too, would 
"raise history to the rank of a science" by making it some- 
thing other than history. Professor Robinson's studies on 
"The New History" should be read in connection with 
Lamprecht's volume; he too believes that the historian 
should learn from the natural scientist and takes no notice 
of the logical difference between a synthesis formulating 
laws and one presenting a complex, unique whole. All the 
sociologists do not belong to the group that assumes that 
the only way to render history scientific is to transform it 
into a natural science. Simmel and Kistiakowski accept the 
logical distinction between history and natural science. 

Among writers on the logic of history, difference of 
opinion exists touching the underlying principles of histori- 
cal synthesis. Miinsterberg emphasizes content as opposed 
to form and insists that the characteristic content of his- 
tory is "individual will-acts" and "that the endless world 

[188] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



of will-acts forms the only material of history": his Phi- 
losophic der Werthe distinguishes the "values" lying at the 
base of historical construction from those supplying the 
apriori of the natural sciences. 

Hughes points out that history deals with "action" as 
opposed to "law" in the natural sciences and seeks to dem- 
onstrate that the word "action" will do for the logic of 
historical science all that is done by the term "individual" 
and will, at the same time, give a content to history. 

Adler, while accepting the distinction between history 
and science, attempts to demonstrate that natural science 
alone can be called science, as it searches for "laws." The 
answer is, of course, that if science is organized knowl- 
edge, history has as good a right to the use of the term as 
botany or chemistry. This debate on the right of the nat- 
ural sciences to monopolize the term science is a survival 
of the period in which it was believed there was no science 
but natural science. 

Gottl tries to make clear the distinction between history, 
on the one side, and geology, geography and anthropology 
on the other. The last three form a group to which Gottl 
gives the name "metahistorik" : geology treats an occur- 
rence as a series of appearances due to natural laws and 
intelligible through analogy; history, on the other hand, 
from the ground of logical thought, conceives of the oc- 
currence as a complex of rational activities and under- 
stands it from its own inner relations and connections. 

Medicus sets over against substance and causality — the 
categories of natural science — potentiality and teleology as 
the categories of historical science. 

Xenopol opposes "historical series," dealing with "suc- 
cessive facts," to "natural laws," dealing with "facts of 
repetition." 

[189] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

Hobhouse distinguishes between "mechanism" and "tel- 
eology" and asserts that "to explain a thing may be to refer 
it (teleologically) to its place in a system which as a whole 
has value, or (mechanically) to its immediate antecedent 
in indifference to any system. The full explanation of a 
machine involves both kinds of explanation." This volume 
is the most recent contribution to the literature of revolt 
against the claim of natural science to supply an exhaustive 
method for discovering the truth of reality. The question 
of the justification of historical method is not a matter 
which concerns the scientist alone ; it is of universal human 
importance. 

CHAPTER II 

CHOICE OF A SUBJECT. COLLECTION AND 
CLASSIFICATION OF MATERIAL 

A. Choice of a Subject. 

Helpful articles, suggesting subjects for investigation. 

1. The American Historical Review: J. W. Thompson, 
"Profitable Fields of Investigation in Mediaeval 
History" (xviii, No. 3) ; J. H. Robinson, "The Study 
of the Lutheran Revolt" (viii, No. 2) ; J. H. Robin- 
son, "Recent Tendencies in the Study of the French 
Revolution" (xi, No. 3) ; W. E. Lingelbach, "His- 
torical Investigation and the Commercial History of 
the Napoleonic Era" (xix, No. 2) ; A. L. Cross, 
"Legal Materials as Sources for the Study of Modern 
English History" (xix, No. 4) ; G. S. Callender, 
"The Position of American Economic History" (xix, 
No. 1 ) ; A. E. Stone, "Some Problems of Southern 
Economic History" (xiii, No. 4). 

[ 190] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



2. Proceedings of the American Historical Association: 

S. B. Fay, "Materials for the Study of Germany in 
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" (1911, 
pages 79-87). 

3. Revue de synthese historique: Many valuable articles 

on various periods and countries, showing what work 
has been done and what remains to be done. 

B. Bibliography. 

The best introduction to bibliographical work is Lan- 
glois, Ch. V. Manuel de bibliographic historique (Paris, 
1904). The great publication of the annual historical out- 
put is the Jahresberichte der G eschichtwissenschajten, pub- 
lished at Berlin. 

For the French revolution, indispensable volumes are: 
Caron, P. Manuel pratique pour I 'etude de la revolution 
frangaise (Paris, 1912) ; Tuetey, A. Les papiers des as- 
semblies de la revolution aux archives nationales (Paris, 
1908) ; Schmidt, C. Les sources de Vhistoire de France 
depuis 178Q aux archives nationales (Paris, 1907) ; the 
annual Repertoire of historical works published by the 
Revue d'histoire mod erne. 

The bibliographies of the different periods and countries 
will be found in Bernheim. 

Some helpful articles in the American Historical Review 
are: G. L. Burr, "European Archives" (vii, No. 4) ; 
C. M. Andrews, "Material in British Archives for Amer- 
ican Colonial History" (x, No. 2) ; J. F. Jameson, "Gaps 
in the Published Records of United States History" (xi, 
No. 4) ; P. Mantoux, "French Reports of British Parlia- 
mentary Debates in the Eighteenth Century" (xii, No. 
2) ; H. E. Bolton, "Material for Southwestern History in 
the Central Archives of Mexico" (xiii, No. 3). 

[191] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

CHAPTER III 
CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES 

A. Forgeries. 

Journal of a Spy in Paris during the Reign of Terror, 
January-July, 1794, by Raoul Hesdin. London, John 
Murray, 1895. 

My article on the third volume of the Memoir es of 
Bailly is found in La revolution frangaise (November 14, 
1902), "Une piece fabriquee; le troisieme volume des 
memoires de Bailly." 

Maxime de la Rocheterie et le Marquis de Beaucourt. 
Lettres de Marie Antoinette. 2 vols. Paris, 1895. 

Otto Becker. Die Verfassungspolitik der franzosischen 
Regierung beim Beginn der grossen Revolution. Berlin, 
1910. 

On the genuineness of the Memoires de Talleyrand see 
the Revue historique, xlviii, 2, article by Alfred Stern, 
xlix, 1, article by Flammermont and the Historische Zeit- 
schrift, Band LXVIII, 58, article by Paul Bailleu. 

A recent publication by O. G. de Heidenstam of a vol- 
ume on Marie Antoinette, Fersen et Barnave, leur cor- 
respondance (Paris, 1913), is considered a forgery by 
Glagau (Annales revolutionnaires, mai-juin, 1914), but 
probably all the errors cited by Glagau can be explained 
on the ground of careless and unscientific editing. 

B. Localization. 

Articles in the American Historical Review on localiza- 
tion and evaluation of the sources are : S. B. Platner, "The 
Credibility of Early Roman History" (vii, No. 2) ; F. M. 

[ 192] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Fling, "The Authorship of the Journal d Adrien Duques- 
noy" (viii, No. 1) ; D. C. Munro, "The Speech of Pope 
Urban II at Clermont, 1095" (xi, No. 2) ; R. C. H. Cat- 
terall, "The Credibility of Marat" (xvi, No. 1); Carl 
Becker, "Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of 
George III" (xvi, No. 2) ; E. G. Bourne, "The Author- 
ship of the Federalist" (ii, Nos. 3, 4). 

My studies of the Memoires de B ail I y will be found in 
the University Studies of the University of Nebraska, iii, 
No. 4. 

The letters of Capello, Desmoulins and Stael-Holstein 
are translated in my Source Studies on the French Revo- 
lution: The Royal Session. Lincoln, 1907. 

Arthur Young's Travels in France edited by Miss 
Betham-Edwards. London, 1892. 

Kovalevsky, Massimo. / dispacci degli amhasciatori 
veneti alia corte di Francis durante la revoluzione. Torino, 
1895. 

De Kermaingant P.-L. Souvenirs et fragments pour 
servir aux memoires de ma vie et de mon temps par le Mar- 
quis de Bouille. 3 vols. Paris, 1906-1911. See reviews in 
American Historical Review, XII, 924, XV, 413, XVII, 
372. 

For the question of the Moniteur, Journal des debats 
and the Histoire . . . par deux amis de la liberie, see 
Carl Christophelsmeier, "The Fourth of August, 1789," 
in the University Studies of the University of Nebraska, 
vi, No. 4. 

Dubois-Crance. Analyse de la revolution frangaise. 
Paris, 1885. 

Thibaudeau. Mes souvenirs, published with an intro- 
duction by Th. Ducrocq, with no indication of place or 
date of publication, but published after 1895. 

[ 193 ] 



THE WRITING OF HISTORY 

We have positive proof that the heads of the guards 
were in Paris before the king and queen left Paris. See the 
study on "The Insurrection of October 5 and 6, 1789" 
in my Source Problems on the French Revolution (Harper 
& Brothers), pp. 234, 246. 

On "The Oath of the Tennis Court," see the study in 
the collection of sources mentioned above, Source Prob- 
lems on the French Revolution. 

On the tricolored cockade, the sources cited are: Pro- 
ces-verbal . . . des electeurs de Paris (3 vols. Paris, 
1790), ii, 92; Oeuvres de Camille Desmoulins (3 vols. 
Paris, 1886), ii, 97; Gouverneur Morris, Diary and Let- 
ters (2 vols. New York, 1888), i, 131 ; Duquesnoy, Jour- 
nal (2 vols. Paris, 1894), i, 408; Grouchy et Guillois, 
La revolution frangaise. Correspondance du Ba'tlli de 
Virieu (Paris, (n.d.) ), p. 121. 

On Mirabeau's speech of June 23, 1789, see my study 
in Source Problems on the French Revolution, "The 
Royal Session on June 23, 1789." 



CHAPTER VII 
SYNTHESIS, OR GROUPING OF THE FACTS 

On values in history see: 

Grotenfeld, A. Die W ertschatzung in der Geschichte. 

Leipzig, 1903. 
Grotenfeld, A. Geschichtliche W ertmasstdbe in der Ge- 

schichtsphilosophie. Leipzig, 1905. 
Rickert. Die Grenzen, etc. (first edition), 371. 
Rickert. Geschichtsphilosophie (1905). 
On the meaning of history see : 

[ 194] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Bergson, H. Uevolution creatrice. Sixth edition. Paris, 

1910. 
Eucken, R. Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt. 

Leipzig, 1896. 
Medicus (already cited). 
On causality see: 

Rickert. Die Grenzen, 392. 

Xenopol, A. "La causalite dans la serie historique," in the 
Revue de synthese historique , xxvii, 3. 
On historical series, besides the article of Xenopol above 
cited, see his volume on Les principes fondamentaux de 
Vhistoire. 



[195] 



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